Economic rigours separate fierce warriors from wives, cattle

Written by LAWI JOEL

I MET Mathayo on a bus on my way downtown in the city of Dar es Salaam. Characteristically, he was dressed in the Maasai customary garb of Rubega as were his two other companions.

That checkered gown, a mere piece of cloth thrown over the shoulders on top of another one wrapped around the waist, made them stand out.

They boarded the bus somewhere midway to Mnazi Mmoja from Buguruni for that was where I was coming from.

The bus was full up and the young, who later told me his other name was Lesepei and his comrades scanned the inside of the bus if perchance they could find a seat. Too bad! There were none.

To a Maasai man standing, even if it means doing so on one leg, is not so much a problem as leaning on his spear stuck in the ground. A short distance later a man seated next to me got off the bus and one of the three Maasai young men came and sat there.

People have accused me of always opening my trap – talking and talking - and I found it impossible to keep it shut with such a young man as Thomas Lesepei next to me.

It is not easy to start a lively talk with someone who does not know you and when I tried to do it sometime previously, the person had tactfully discouraged me, answering me but curtly.

I gave up. However, I found it irresistible to start a talk with Lesepei, a young descendant of the nation’s proud community, who still clang so religiously to their tradition.

Lesepei told me he had just come to Dar es Salaam from Longido and was at the time working in the city. I guessed he was a watchman like most of his district mates.

Lesepei sounded happy and proud of his work. “Why have you stopped being a herdsman?” I asked him. “Cattle is big wealth.” He said life had become hard and he needed more money to keep his three wives. Longido was a long way from Dar es Salaam.

It was six months then since he left his three wives and came to Dar es Salaam. I knew he had some livestock and wanted to know how big his herd was.

“Do you have one hundred cows?” “It is more than that,” he answered. But if he was away so long in the city, who grazed the livestock? His wives looked after the cattle during his absence.

That sounded to me a quite challenging task. I knew all the three wives would not go out to pasture the animals. Only one of them at a time would graze them. Lesepei confirmed what I thought and I told him the job was just much for any woman.

“She cannot know when one animal is missing from such a big herd, can she?” “Yes, she can. She knows every animal and will know if one is missing,” he said. Then it was tradition.

And being a traditional way of life, the work of grazing cattle would surely be no gruelling task to the women. If it was, it was not strange. Lesepei had come to Dar es Salaam to look for work to meet the cost of the modern world. I keenly observed him in his Rubega where he sat by the window.

He looked healthy, content and calm, typically rustic. Many Maasai men worked in the city as sentries. What precisely did Lesepei do? I asked again as a matter of confirmation.

He was a watchman. He must be in his early thirties and such a young man ought to be with his family unless he had to depart from them, which in his case and given his wealth of livestock I did not think was necessary. What was his opinion on that? Lesepei laughed coyly.

Then he looked at me and laughed again, aloud. I asked him why he was laughing. “I know what you mean, Mzee?” he said. The title of ‘mzee’ for me was now becoming common.

I must truly be mzee – an old man, an elder of the society. I remembered the days when I was the age of Lesepei; almost a quarter of a century ago. I lived together with my wife and the children as we still do today.

On one occasion my family and I had gone on leave in the village upcountry. Some emergency occurred that drained me of all the cash I had and I was forced to leave my wife behind in the village and travel back to Dar and work for a while to get money for her fair.

We had only one child then. My father called me and sternly said: “Your wife and you are still young people. You need to be together. Don’t take long before you send money to her to come to you in Dar es Salaam.”

I understood what the old man meant. I told Lesepei the same thing now. He understood what I meant and that was why he laughed. “Look, all the three wives can’t wait for you all that time, young as they are, can they?” I asked him.

He chortled again and said: “Of course I know they can’t and will be ‘stealing’ it out somewhere. I don’t mind. Let them just quench their thirst somewhere until I return and I will take of them from there on my return.

I wished we could be together on the bus for long, but I knew Lesepei and his comrades were nearing their destination because one of them asked him a question in their tongue and he moved uneasily in his seat.

They spoke rapidly in Kimasai after which Lesepei turned to me and said: “That is life, Mzee. You can’t guard your wives always.” Ideally, Lesepei ought to know that he had created a bigger problem than just giving his three wives leeway to satisfy their sexual thirst in his absence because it was too strong a demand of nature to resist.

I told him so and added that to satisfy a six or seven months’ sexual thirst of three women was like trying to move a mountain. He looked healthy and strong, but I doubted if he could fulfill satisfactorily that need. “That is not a problem, Mzee.

There is a herb that I chew and become so powerful that I leave them asking for a rest,” he told me with another chortle. “Why don’t you give them the same herb or its equivalent for women to a drawn match?” “If I do that they will overpower me and win the match,” he answered. “In this game it is best if the man wins.

You get more respect and the woman is left satisfied enough not to wander for it with another man.” I wanted to talk with Lesepei some more and maybe even ask him for that wonderful herb to take my better half on a heavenly trip, but they reached their destination and got off the bus.