Blogs

If you expect that after all these years in Mbogoi I can now hold a fluent conversation in Maa about the condition of the cattle and the weather forecast, I am sorry to disappoint you. I cannot. 

We blend in among the traders. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people, cows, and goats here. Some stand about calmly, some glance around nervously, some are deep in lively debate, and some move shyly from place to place at that ultra-slow African pace. By that I mean the people, the cows, the sheep, and the goats

My first trips to Tanzania came with very clear rules: ice in a drink was suspicious, and I brushed my teeth exclusively with bottled water. But in Mbogoi, those European certainties dissolve faster than you can pull out a bottle of sanitiser.

The biggest question was this: why should they learn to read and write when they have managed for hundreds of years without this particular art? Civilization is coming, roads are being built, mobile phones are being introduced. Just as every kind of progress brings positive changes, such as better medicines or higher incomes, it also brings negative ones.

My romantic notions of life out in the wild came true to the very last dot in 2020. I ended up in the Tanzanian bush, in a mud hut with a thatched roof. The bush has a curious talent - it takes away your signal, but gives you your head back.

Sekenoi is dressed oddly today, which naturally causes some concern among the Maasai observers. What begins as an ordinary laundry day slowly turns into something that may require a short explanation and a longer silence.