by Katy Leakey

Color and beauty are the thoughts that strike me when I see a Maasai woman. Each morning, as I walk out to greet the women who work with us, I am impressed by their dramatic allure. With their long slender necks, ear and wrists adorned in layers of beaded jewelry, and fit bodies draped in colorful patterned shukas, they are both stately and voluptuous—a blend few cultures have achieved.

My husband and I live among the Maasai in Kenya and employ the women to handcraft jewelry. The business started eight years ago as a way to help them through difficult times and has expanded beyond that early goal. As we began to build the business, we were sensitive to preserving the Maasai culture and not bringing change; instead, we wanted to create opportunity for them. In considering this, I found myself examining values, theirs and mine. Here are some of my first observations.

Maasai children are raised to look after the community first, then to be self-sustaining individuals—just the opposite of American children. While most American women handle the responsibilities of their lives without help, Maasai women pitch in together, cooking, caring for babies, mending the home, gathering wood and cleaning. Not a chore goes unshared.

An American woman, accustomed to doing things on her own, might feel trapped and stifled by such proximity. A Maasai woman, dropped into our world, would feel isolated and lonely, cut off from her traditional system of friends and family. She would view it as a world without joy.

In the Maasai society, where the group comes first, change involves the entire group and is a slow and cumbersome evolution that may take generations. Because individuals in this society tend to feel secure and less stressed, not many seek change. Americans can alter course without having to change the ideologies of their country and with utmost speed; hence our rapid evolution in just 227 years. Yet in our culture of individuals, without loving and trusted people close by, one often feels what the Maasai woman would feel if placed here: insecure, lonely, and isolated, feelings often identified as contributing factors to social violence.

Many people ask me what it is that makes the Maasai so happy, when, as perceived by westerners, they have nothing. My answer is that it’s something that our ancestors knew. Make family and friends the center of your universe. Reach out, for it is in the sharing that joy dwells. This is what the Maasai women practice and it’s what they have taught one individual American woman who lives among them.

Katy Leakey and her husband Philip founded The Leakey Collection in 2001 as a way to help their neighbors, the pastoral Maasai, during times of drought. To learn more about life in Kenya and the Maasai culture, visit Katy’s blog.

Images provided by Katy Leakey.

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