Photos taken by Msabaha

I met the teacher Msabaha only a few times, but everyone recommended him as the kind of person with a very low risk of not returning my phone. So I lent it to him to photograph his life. Or at least whatever he felt like showing people.
Msabaha was a teacher employed by the state and he didn’t originally come from Mbogoi—which, incidentally, was nothing unusual, because almost no one did. The village only started to grow around the school and gradually became a meeting place for the Maasai, who had previously lived in a fairly decentralized way. Msabaha also told me the name of the village and tribe he came from, but local place names are unbelievably complicated and impossible to remember.

I liked his ironic sense of humor. For example, we were drinking beer in front of the house and I was asking questions, as usual. This time it was whether school is compulsory and what happens if children don’t go to school. Msabaha turned toward the bush and spread his arms, as if to say, “You can see it for yourself.” Or when we talked about the level of education of children who finish the seven compulsory grades, he said, “Well, if someone can count to a hundred, he’ll become a doctor or an engineer.” And here are the photos taken by Msabaha, straight from the phone, unedited.