I am faced daily with the desire to love my neighbors in the midst of a cultural, environmental, and spiritual crisis that is beyond either of our control. The Maasai people of Kenya are facing vast challenges far more complex than I can articulate and even understand.

However, in this story, I outline my observations and experience in trying to infuse my interactions with my neighbors with dignity and love in the middle of the dichotomy of helping versus disempowering.

This year, our region missed the long rains (2-4 weeks of heavy rains between March and May). Our neighbors comment about the intensity of the drought every time we exchange greetings.

We hand cut our grass, baled it into 5 bales and donated it to the neighbors for their hungry cows. The two wives came and carried them on their backs south along the path to their homestead.

After that, the husband has sent his wives every few days to cut a bag from what is left around the edges. They also collect the dried seed pods from under the big acacia tree for the cows in order to help them make more milk.

Many men of various ages have taken some or all of their cows to far flung places. There are large ranches on the other side of Nairobi where you can essentially “rent a meadow”, pay per cow per day to graze. Some go south toward Magadi into “olpurkel”, the wilderness.

Homesteads now don’t have milk for the family’s favorite daily drink/food: “shaai”. This is half water, half milk with a sprinkle of black tea leaves, brought to a boil, sieved, then loaded with sugar.

Instead, they drink “strong tea” which is plain black tea. The remaining mainstays are now “ugali” (white corn meal boiled in a large stiff chunk) and porridge (cooked white flour and water).

The men move around a lot, going to community events and town and so they get meat and potatoes more frequently then the women at home.

If the drought continues until the next rains that are expected (1-3 weeks between Oct-Dec), things could become dire. The people will get hungrier, the cows, goats, sheep will start dying.

Why would things get so dire, you might be thinking, when there are literally thousands of head of livestock in this region? Couldn’t these easily be sold to fund the purchase of food and household needs for all the people through any drought, let alone feed the people from butchering?

The main reason is the essence of the Maasai people. Tradition.

The tradition of cows and livestock is so strong here that a man is not considered worth listening to if he has no cows. This is an oral culture so being listened to is a big deal. How can he marry wives or have traditional ceremonies or pass on inheritance to his sons if he doesn’t have cows? We’ve heard that people come around and mourn with someone who has lost his cows in a drought like its a funeral.

Large parts of the Maasai community suffer greatly in a drought because of this tradition. Many people watch their wealth decrease until it dies and becomes only the value of its hide.

As recently as 15 years ago there was much more communal land, many less fences. The pastoralist tradition was that the people and their cow herds moved with the cycles of the weather so that the seasons of plenty and drought were expected. There were coping mechanisms built in to the Maasai lifestyle.

But, there is the digital modern age invading Kenya. You see it in the cell phones in almost every Maasai hand and in the huge metropolitan city of Nairobi, only 50 km away.

The internal conflicts are waging inside each Maasai person; tradition? material progress? What do we leave? what do we take as we move forward in time?

And ever and ongoing, the population is exploding. In the last 10 years Kenya population went from about 30 million to about 40 million. In the rural areas where the tribes traditionally practice polygamy, the population growth is astounding with huge numbers of children per husband.

Currently, the Maasai of our region are caught between the new stationary lifestyle of land with fences and the traveling ways of old. New coping mechanism are required for preservation of a community and its culture. The vice grip of adhering to tradition also means a slowness to embrace alternative coping mechanisms to deal with internal and external community pressures and drought.

The younger generation has a percentage of men and women who’ve been to school and even university. This group has at least an understanding of using livestock as a commodity, knowing when to buy and sell cows to make money intead of watching them die. But their fathers are still in control of the herds.

The other interesting piece of this puzzle is that outsiders/development organizations have for many years come in to hand out food when the drought comes and causes grief for the Maasai. The community as a whole has not had been required to take a serious look at themselves in order to face their changing world.

The result is a deep seeded and disturbing expectation that it is the responsibility of “outsiders” to come in and “rescue” them.

Whether they realize it or not, it keeps them from breaking free into the wealth and vitality that they actually have as a community. It keeps the community from requiring their leaders to stand up and make hard choices to save their culture, traditions and values. It keeps the men from having to take a look at how they are caring for their cows versus their wives and children.

In the midst of this culture-wide situation, many little people end up suffering. As always, the least powerful in a community get the worst end of it. The women and children.

How does all this affect my work and life here in Kenya in a Maasai community?

We talk constantly with our food security partner organizations about how they are addressing these things. They are Maasai themselves and we can see even in them, the ones meant to be catalysts for change, that adjusting the way they arrange their lives is not an easy thing.

Then there’s my immediate neighbors. I watch the wives, my friends, getting leaner and leaner, knowing their extremely limited diet, knowing my never limited diet. Here I am in the midst, knowing if I were to start handing out food, trying to rescue, I’d be feeding into the locally prevelant mentality of dependency. I would not be allowing room for the painful shove that comes after the proverbial push that causes us humans to change for our betterment.

So, what can I do where I’m at? Only small things like a drop in an ocean.

I sing the songs of how to call people out of dependency in my work with the Maasai folks who implement the three projects we are working with. I keep encouraging two young neighbors that have shown interest, to grow their own little kale garden by their door with the grey water they use during the day. I grow my own kale patch and periodically send neighbors home with a bagful (especially the pregnant ones). I give little bits of work here and there, as I can find it, and often, I make them shaai when they visit, with a bit extra milk.

Most of all, I look into my neighbors’ eyes, hold onto their hands, and show them with all that is in me that they are dignified, valuable, capable people. And I pray they can hear what I’m saying.

Note: These are complex cultural situations and I have one perspective: my own. I cannot presume to fully understand the profundity of the issues in only 2 1/2 years of living side by side with my Maasai neighbors.

Corinna ClymerOslon and her family took a three-year assignment with Mennonite Central Committee in Najile, Kenya.