How many lions have we saved? Is it enough?
Category: Meet the Lion Guardians | Date: Aug 23 2008 | By: lionguardians
Today I am going to answer some questions that Paula asked me. She wanted to know how many lions we have saved, is it enough, and what are my greatest challenges that keep me awake at night. I asked Lion Guardian Koikai these questions last week, but I will give you my answers too.
It is hard to say how many lions we have saved. The Lion Guardians stop lions from being killed in different ways. They save them directly by stopping hunting parties, and they have done this 10 times, so we know that they have saved at least 10 lions, as if a lion hunting part goes out you can guarantee they will kill at least one lion, maybe two.
The Lion Guardians also stop lions from being killed indirectly, by reducing conflict between lions and people - so people are less likely to go out and kill lions in retaliation when their livestock are killed. It is hard to say how many lions we have saved by helping the communities in this way, but it must be many.
Is it enough? I don’t think we it will be enough until lions stop being killed over the whole of the ecosystem. At the moment if a lion moves out of our ranch it is risking its life, because murrans on other ranches are still killing lions. Until we have expanded the Lion Guardians program to the whole ecosystem, and onto other ranches I don’t think it will be enough.
And what keeps me up at night? The challenge of funding. The Lion Guardians program relies on your donations to continue running - it is as simple as that! If we can’t run the program here, we will not be able to expand it to other areas and save the lions on our neighboring ranches. This really keeps me awake at night!
Tags: Kenya, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, Maasai, marriage, masai
Your questions answered (part 4)
Category: Lion Guardians work | Date: Aug 16 2008 | By: lionguardians
We recently asked the Lion Guardians some questions from you, the blog readers. Here I ask some questions from Paula. She wants to know how many lions have the Guardians saved, is it enough, and what are our greatest challenges, that keep us awake at night? Some very difficult questions to answer! She asked them to me, and I will post my answers soon, but here are Lion Guardian Koikai’s responses.
He doesn’t know exactly how many lions the Guardians have saved, but he knows there are more now than there were. He also doesn’t think that they have saved enough yet - as you don’t yet see them around as often as you used to and the more lions that are saved, the more people can be employed.
What keeps him awake at night is worrying about going tracking for lions. Working alone in the bush can be very dangerous, so this is his main challenge.
Tags: challenges, Kenya, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, Maasai, marriage, masai
Maasai marriage
Category: Maasai traditions | Date: Jun 26 2008 | By: lionguardians
Marriage in Maasai culture is one of our most important traditional activities. A man has to be married as soon as he undergoes the circumcision ceremony. A Maasai murran is not able to choose whom he is going to marry. If a murran’s father has a good friend with a daughter, then the fathers will negotiate among themselves and decide on a date to marry off their son and daughter, without consulting them first.
A week before the celebration a meeting is held know in Maasai as “aadung inkishu“, which literally means the splitting of cows. This is where both parties agree on the number of livestock that will be paid by the family of the murran, to that of the daughter. This amount differs from person to person. If it is an arrangement between friends it may be 4 or 5 cows, or it may be as high as 14 or 15. As you can see in the video (filmed by Lion Guardian Koikai), he was joking that he would offer 12 cows for Amy to be his second wife!
A Maasai murran does not see his bride before the marriage, and in most cases they have never met before the ceremony. Some days before the marriage a murran picks his best man and they travel together to the bride’s boma to pick her up, taking with them the dowry they are paying to the family.
If her boma is far away, they have to count how many days it will take them to walk to the bride’s boma and back to make sure they get back in time for the marriage! The bridegroom and best man must walk all the way there by themselves. Then they will pick up the bride from her boma, and they will walk all the way back to his boma. No members of her family are permitted to attend the marriage ceremony. She is no longer part of their family.
One may wonder why Maasai men have to pay the bride’s family livestock when they marry. This is so that the family will be able to remember their daughter who is no longer part of the family. These livestock will always remind them of her. Does this happen in your culture?
Tags: Kenya, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, Maasai, marriage, masai
Maasai grooming
Category: Maasai traditions | Date: Jun 03 2008 | By: lionguardians
Being a murran means one has to be smart all the time; but this does not mean a murran must take a shower every day. Instead, a murran always carries a mirror tied to one end of his shuka, and you will often see him looking at himself in the mirror, making sure he is well-groomed. The yellow and pink circles of plastic you can see hanging from these murrans’ shukas are mirrors.
He must make sure that the red ochre that is applied to the face is not messed up, so that he can re-apply it if it gets damaged. Showers are normally taken in a river, not bathrooms, and if it takes a whole month to get to a river or close to any water source then they can wait. During sleeping they use a piece of the stomach of a cow, that is made thin and light. They wrap it around their hair so that they don’t damage the red ochre.
Murrans clean their teeth with a branch of a bush. The roots of this bush are boiled up and used to treat upset stomachs, but the branches are cut and stripped of their bark. The top is then made flat for cleaning the teeth, and the other end is sharpened to use as a toothpick. This video, filmed by Lion Guardian Lenkina, shows me making a Maasai toothbrush!
Tags: Kenya, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, Maasai, marriage, masai
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