Mara Mobile Veterinary Unit

Category: Maasai People | Date: Sep 26 2007 | By: admin

My dog handler is called Lesingo. He has helped me vaccinate 2,500 dogs and he is known locally as ‘dog boy’ nowadays (not a great thing for Maasai, but he says he likes working with dogs and do not care what other people say). This week, Lesingo went to his first Enkaputi (engagement) with 5 cattle and plenty of shuka (red cloth) to please his future wife. Lesingo is 27 and new wife to be is 18. He is very nervous since it is his first wife. I asked him how many wives he would want to wed in the future, and he tells me that he is still thinking and that it all depends on number of cattle he gets in the future. My next door neighbor got 5 wives, but nowadays it seems like having 2 wives is much more common rather than having numerous wives!