A new generation of Maasai warriors is born in Kenya

OLAIMUTIAI, Kenya — In the bracing morning cold in the forest highlands overlooking Kenya's Maasailand, 900 teenage boys clad in traditional Maasai shukhas or blankets line up for a cup of hot milk that will sustain them through the day.

In spite of the cold, they have been sleeping on the forest floor. They have gone hungry. And they haven't bathed in a month.

It's all part of learning to be a Maasai warrior.

Handpicked for training

They have traveled to Olaimutiai in Kenya's Narok county from all over the Maasai ancestral lands in southern Kenya and northern Tanzania. All 900 were handpicked to take part in a Maasai warrior training camp, which only happens every 10 to 15 years. It teaches Maasai cultural values, leadership skills — and how to be tough.

Isaac Mpusia, a 16-year-old high schooler, was visited at home last March by a group of boys who asked for and were offered hospitality, and stayed overnight. The next day, they told him to leave with them.

''They didn't tell me (where we were going) and I was worried at first,'' he says. But he understood the honor of having been chosen, and went.

''When you come here, you learn a lot of things that were done by our parents,'' Mpusia says. ''You have to have discipline.''

Changing times

Traditionally, transitioning from child to warrior as a Maasai involved taking part in a one-year warrior camp. Maasai youths would be secluded and learn survival skills, bushcraft — and, if the opportunity arose, how to kill a lion.

All that has changed. Although ''Enkipaata'' — the official rite of passage that includes warrior training — has been declared a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding, it has been modernized.

The boys now wield long sticks, not blades. No lions are killed. And warrior camp has been condensed down to one month, timed to coincide with school holidays.

Education takes precedence

Joyce Naingisa's son is taking part in this Enkipaata, and although she is just 34 years old, this ritual has already changed considerably in her lifetime.

''My husband dropped out of school for a whole year so that he could attend," she says. ''But now, they are the leaders, and they know the importance of education. So these boys will undergo this rite of passage, but we still make sure that they go to school.''

The role of women

Naingisa is a county minister in Narok North County and took a month off work to be here. One of her traditional responsibilities as a Maasai wife and mother is to help build the homes that make up this temporary settlement.

''We just came to a plain field here, and now you can see a full house. That is the role of women: to build the shelter,'' she explains.

Having all 900 recruits come with their families would be logistically impossible, so Naingisa feels responsible for all of them.

''The children are brought here from across Kenya and Tanzania, so we are their mothers. They can enter any house. They can all eat. There is no difference between my son, whose mother is here, and the one whose mother is not here.''

Sharing and brotherhood

On the day of their graduation, a ceremonial bull is slaughtered and blessed by the elders, before being shared by everyone.

Stanley Naingisa — Joyce's husband and chief of his own age set — explains the importance of the meat-sharing ceremony.

''It teaches them sharing,'' he says. ''It teaches them brotherhood. It teaches them being bound together as a community and as a people. For the Maasai, when you say that somebody is of your age set, these are people that have grown with you, and that you are going to grow old with.''

Shrinking lands

This new generation of Maasai leaders faces unique challenges. Kenya's 1.2 million Maasai people are profoundly affected both by climate change and the shrinking of the grazing land available to them, both because of urbanization and agricultural expansion.

''These children will be change-makers,'' says Mosinte Nkoitiko, a 46-year-old cultural chief who traveled here from Tanzania. ''That's the message that we want to send to them. They are the ones facing these challenges, and we want them to know that they are not alone.''

Seedlings planted for the new generation

When this temporary settlement was built for the warrior camp, they also planted 150 seeds and 50 seedlings: trees that they hope will grow with their children.

''The trees have been blessed by their fathers and grandfathers, so that they can now have children,'' says Joyce Naingisa. ''They are starting a new generation.''

At the graduation ceremony, this new generation was officially given the name ''Iltaretu.'' It will include the thousands of boys of the same age who weren't able to come here in person, but were represented by the 900 boys who were.

''When we meet in future, we shall know each other,'' says Isaac Mpusia. ''Because we come from the same age group.''