The Maasai Man--Part 2

“I’ve never seen anything as strong as a lion.”  

Twerta, The Maasai Man

“Have you ever killed a lion, Twerta?” I asked.  “Ndio,” he said, “simba mbili.” Yes, two lions. The first, he killed as a young morani warrior, and the other, when a lion broke through the protective nettle fence that surrounded his home and attacked one of his cows.   

Traditionally, as part of the initiation of the newly circumcised morani warrior, their boys-to-man ritual included a group lion kill.  The boys, in their black robes and painted faces, would surround a male lion and rush in with their spears trying to wound it.  Once injured, the lion would invariably try to break out of the circle by charging one of the boys.  The threatened boy had a large cape buffalo skin shield to hide under while the other boys pummeled and stabbed the lion until he died.

Twerta’s description of his first lion kill was comparable to this generalized description of the practice.  But Twerta’s experience was made more profound by the fact that one of the morani boys in his group was badly hurt by the threatened beast.   “The lion almost killed him,” Twerta said, “his face, his scalp, his skin--all just ripped off.”

Years later, Twerta was awakened one night by his distressed cattle.  A female lion (the ones that do most of the hunting) had penetrated the fence that surrounded his home and the corral meant to keep the predators out.  “The lion just grabbed my cow and threw it over the fence,” he said.  “I’ve never seen anything as strong as a lion.” But, like most Maasai men, Twerta had been trained to kill the predators that threatened his herds.  Twerta didn’t go into as much detail about this incident and I noted some reluctance (or guilt?) in his voice about having killed this lion.

A Maasai encampment.  You can see the arrangement of thatched topped circular homes

and the encircled enclosures made a of sticks and bushes for their cows and goats from this aerial view stock photo.

Maybe Twerta didn’t want to admit to having killed this second lion because nowadays the Maasai are forbidden to kill lions and the practice has been discouraged for decades.  The lion population in Africa is facing extinction (by 2050 by some estimates) and in Western Africa they are all but wiped out.  In the past three decades the lion population has been reduced by 50% to a total world estimate of 34,000. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-countdown

Still, there are thousands of lions that roam the savannahs of eastern Africa and continue to threaten the livelihoods of the Maasai.

There are several programs in place to provide economic incentives, education, and alternatives to the herders.  The Predator Compensation Fund active in Kenya, for example, reimburses the herders for cattle lost in lion attacks.  (See this excellent video, https://www.bing.com/videos/search=maasai+reimbursement

In other areas, there are programs like the Ruaha Carnivore Project, funded by the African Wildlife Foundation, where tribal communities are learning to build better livestock enclosures to protect their herds and are offered other economic benefits for demonstrating success in living peacefully with carnivores.http://www.awf.org/wildlife-conservation/lion

Still, as reported in a National Geographic story entitled, Can Good Come From Maasai Lion Killings in the Serengeti?, dated April 2014,  lions (and sometimes the moranis who hunt them) continue to be killed.  They report on a new incentive that involves government payments as a “reward for conservation” rather than paying them for lost livestock. The idea is pay the “hot-blooded young” moranis to be lion-tracking scouts that protect other herders against certain cats, and thereby, “defusing lion conflicts before they happen...then [the] living lions could serve as an even better voucher of courage and competence than dead ones." http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/04/140428

And I have another possible solution. Just get the lions, like these, that we saw feasting on a wildebeest in Ngorongoro Crater, to teach their friends that there is other meat to eat beside the Maasai cows.

UP NEXT: THE MAASAI MAN--Part 3 (Focus: Elephants!)