It was a beautiful day for a game drive and we saw tons of animals, especially my favorite, the zebras. Coyle of course was in charge of photography again.
Lest anyone thing Coyle is an urbane and cultured world traveler, he spent most of the morning
wanting to find the “Barfalo” which as he tells it is an animal that barfs all over the grass and in the
water. (I have no ideas where he comes up with these things!) He also kept asking the driver on the
game drives so we could take pictures of animal poop. I’ll be sure not to share those pictures in this
blog.
The big thing we did today was have the opportunity to visit a Maasai village. The Maasai are a nomadic tribe of herders that live in the Kenya and Tanzania. They are most known for their red robes and for their dancing which includes high jumping. The leader of this village describes themselves as semi-nomadic. They have been in this area for about 5 years. The Maasai have permission from the government to graze their animals in the national parks so many groups live around here. 
Because it’s the dry season, the “junior warriors” or boys ages 16-25
Are away with their cattle several hundred kilometers away for the past few months. If all goes according to plan, they will return in about a month. Living in the village on a more permanent basis are older men, women and children. They open their village up to tourists for extra money but more importantly to share their culture with the world.
We got to visit one of their houses which Coyle was super amused to learn was made out of cow dung. They are short and small but have room for a kitchen and two bedrooms. Each house takes 10 women about 3 weeks to build and they have to be rebuilt about every three years.
We also met the community doctor in training. His father is the current doctor but is 93 years old so
he is the one of his father’s 19 children (by 3 wives) chosen to take over and he feels it is his duty to
do so. The Maasai only go to a hospital in the case of broken bones or a need for an operation.
Everything else is done in the community. They use a variety of plants for treatments and he has to walk eleven days to the area where most of these plants are found. The junior doctor and his brother also gave Coyle a lesson in how to start a fire the Maasai way. They start with a very flammable material - poop! In this case elephant dung is often used. They rub sticks together until it starts to smoke and eventually catch fire. Coyle collected some sticks to put on the fire and is so excited that he “saved the fire”.
Probably the most rewarding experience we had in the village is one I don’t have a picture of. Coyle made a friend, a little boy named Samuel who was about three. He followed us all over the village and he and Coyle kept shaking hands and high fiving. It was really very cute. The reason I didn’t take a picture is because Samuel wasn’t part of the “show” that the village puts on that they encourage people to photograph and video. He was just a kid and I didn’t want to take advantage of that. If his parents were there and also wanted to take a picture of him and Coyle it would be a more equal interaction and I’m ok with that. I struggle constantly when I travel about how to learn about different cultures in a way that feels respectful and not as if I’m there gawking at people for my own entertainment. Having Coyle with me helps because you can’t help but make a connection with a kid around - he definitely does steal the show.
After the visit to the Maasai village we had one last game drive where we saw some lions.
Throughout our time here we saw four of the “big five” animals that people search for in Kenya. We knew there were no rhinos in Amboseli so we knew four was the best we could do but it was exciting. More exciting was how close we got to the animals Coyle loved like the zebras and the “ca-Zelles”.
As the sun set over Amboseli we headed back to the lodge for one last night. Tomorrow it’s back to Nairobi for a couple of days till we fly home Wednesday morning.
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