As she finishes A hot cup of coffee in her modest gazebo, Leela hazzah takes one last look at the Mt. Kilimanjaro sunrise before beginning her day. once again, her car won’t start, so she gathers her things and looks forward to ten hours of wandering on foot among the hut villages of the Kenyan Maasailand countryside, chatting with the natives about every subject imaginable, like the importance of finding good cow dung to plaster homes.
The Maasai are a nomadic people who embrace tradition in everything they say and do. the women clean, cook, and collect water and firewood; children tend to the livestock; warriors protect the villages or, during drought season, help the children; and elders direct day-to-day activities. Much of their culture is defined by an elaborate series of rituals and rites of passage. over the last four years, many of the Maasai have embraced hazzah, a graduate student at the university of Wisconsin–Madison, whose American-egyptian features seem as much out of place among the Maasai as her purpose for living with them.
A student of conservation biology and sustainable development, hazzah is trying to stop the Maasai from annihilating part of what makes their culture so unique. the Maasai livelihood depends on the health of its livestock, which fall prey to lions. out of this age-old threat has grown the tradition of olamayio, in which tribesmen prove their courage by hunting a lion. the successful first-time hunter earns a new name—such as Melubo, meaning “Satisfied”—as well as a life-time of respect for himself and an occasion to celebrate for his entire tribe. Lion hunts also often take place outside of ritual, when Maasai retaliate for lost livestock.
The problem is, the Maasai are killing the lions at a rate that ensures local extinction within a few years. According to lionconservation.org, scientists believed there were up to 200,000 lions living in Africa until a recent continental survey revealed that the number has dropped dramatically to approximately 23,000, and most of these are living in protected national parks. hazzah estimates 2,010 lions remain in Kenya, 825 of which roam Maasailand…for now.
“It’s not [the Maasai’s] fault,” hazzah says. “They love their livestock like they love their own children.” she understands that when they wake to find their precious herds assailed overnight, warnings about overhunting fall upon deaf ears. nonetheless, hazzah is set on the seemingly impossible task of reconciling the Maasai’s culture with the salvation of the lion population.
It’s a task that takes patience and compassion. “I spent a month or two just gaining people’s trust when I first moved to the community,” hazzah recalls. she wouldn’t discuss sensitive topics like losing livestock or problems with predators. instead, she conducted what anthropologists call “Participatory observation.” hazzah helped women carry water. she herded livestock in the hills. she drank tea with the elders. finally, the community started to open up to her and she began her research.
“What i realized is that we cannot hope to change Maasai culture, but instead we need to embrace it,” she says. in other words, rather than asking the Maasai to stop lion hunts altogether, it could be possible to leverage their traditional knowledge of their land to advance conservation. she is participating in the development of an ongoing program called “Lion Guardians,” through which tribesmen gain their social status by protecting