Comments
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From: dnew@san.rr.com (Darren New)
Subject: (P:\Africa\Masai) index.gif (0/1) (115 K)
Date: Wed, 07 Feb 2001 20:33:18 GMT

Since this batch of lions was kind of small,
I'll add some pictures of the lion's natural
predators on the food chain. The Masai.

The Masai own all the cattle in the world,
since God gave them all the cattle in return
for only eating domestic animals (cattle and
goats as far as I could tell).

645 is one of the villiages under the mountain.
660 is (hard to tell, I know) one of the herders.
That's full-zoom at 300mm. You can see the
red cloak about 3 miles away.
658 is a traditional dance in progress.
(Obviously the actual video looks better)
As is 657. In the background, you can see
the ring of thornbushes used to keep the goats
in and the lions out. It doesn't really keep the
lions out, but the lions can't drag the dead goat
away, and the lions have learned the Masai really
dislike lions eating their goats, so...
656 is a chicken pen.
655 are the lovely brides-to-be. 12 cows will get you one.
654 is a 4-person house on the left there.
Branch and cow-dung construction.
653 is just tourists. Sorry about that.
652 is tourists (us) with the family leader.
651 is us with the ladies doing the demonstration dances.
650 - trinket sales are big business, it seems.
649 - just some kids.
648 - The ladies from 651 actually doing their dance.
661 is the man the lodge hired to slingshot pebbles at the monkeys
to keep them from stealing the food in the restaurant. The
monkeys would wait till his back was turned, and go for it anyway.
Much smarter than the birds, who persistantly tried to get thru
the skylights, not realizing there were no walls on the room.

Again, appologies if the human content of these pictures is
thought inappropriate, but humans *are* animals, and the
Masai in particular are very traditionally living in tune
with nature.

Oh, "Masai" is the ethnic group in Africa that are the herders,
and thus warriors. (*You* herd goats amongst lions, and see
if *you* don't learn to fight.)
The Bantu are the farmers. There are a couple others I don't
recall offhand and would have to look up.

Kenya and Tanzania, Summer 2000.
Scanned from 6x4 prints of 35mm film
with a not-too-good scanner.
Released to the Public Domain,
but I would appriciate hearing about
commercial use of the photos.
-- Darren New.