800
KENYA
Noolkisaruni Tarakuai
The Maasai Herder
One Day’s Food
IN january
BREAKFAST AND DINNER Ugali (thick cornmeal porridge), 14.1 oz (only half is pictured) • Banana,
3.4 oz • Black tea (2), 12 fl oz; with whole milk, 2 fl oz; and sugar, 2 tbsp • Water, hauled from a
reservoir and boiled, 2.1 qt
CALORIES 800
Age: 38 • Height: 5'5" • Weight: 103 pounds
Historically, the diet of the semi-nomadic
Maasai people consisted of meat, blood, and
copious amounts of milk, but politics and en-
croaching development have taken a large
bite out of communal land, making it diffi-
cult to successfully graze a large herd. Today,
cornmeal and potatoes produced by others
are more likely to be the centerpiece of the
Maasai diet.
In times of drought, Maasai family for-
tunes are in jeopardy, and that’s where most
Maasai pastoralists in Kenya’s semiarid Rift
Valley find themselves these days: locked in
a losing battle with Mother Nature.
SOUTHERN great rift valley • A typical
Maasai man’s conversation with a wife he
hasn’t seen for a while begins with “How are
the cows?” The family herd is, in essence,
the family bank account and, as such, is
all-important. They keep their animals safe,
count them often, sell them only when they
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have to, and, increasingly, rarely eat them.
When we meet Noolkisaruni Tarakuai in
her village of Olgos, just outside the Ma-
sai Mara National Reserve, the 38-year-old
mother of seven is organizing the butcher-
ing of a pregnant cow that has fallen and is
dying. The reason for its distress isn’t yet
clear, but the cow is lying on the ground a
20-minute walk from her house, and she’s
going to have to kill it. Her husband, Kipanoi
Ole “Sammy” Tarakuai, the local chief, is con-
sulted, as the death of a cow is a serious
matter, and he gives permission. Once the
word goes out, every family in the area sends
a representative or two to claim a bit of the
meat. As a Maasai elder, Chief Sammy’s role
is to ensure the well-being of his clan, which
generally means sharing everything he owns.
Typically, all members of a Maasai clan have
a responsibility to every other clansman, and
sharing is common.
Three young men show up with matches
and prepare to eat their instant meal on-site.
They gather brush and sit down to wait for
their piece of cow. A passing herdsman wan-
ders by and waits for a piece as well.
Life on the dry, scrubby plain can be unfor-
giving, but there are both good and bad years.
“In a good year,” Noolkisaruni says, “I’ll milk
the cows until I have a calabash [gourd] full,
then prepare milk tea and ugali [cornmeal
porridge] for the children, and ugali and a
cup of milk for the herdsman. The herdsman
is the most important person here—without
him, there’s no milk. After he leaves with the
herd, I eat ugali if there is some left and have
a cup of milk myself.” This is either fermented
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W H AT I E AT
Noolkisaruni Tarakuai, third of four wives of a Maasai chief, at her family’s corral with her typical day’s worth of food. The prolonged drought that has taken a
toll on livestock and wild animal populations alike throughout sub-Saharan Africa has also taken a toll on its people. There is little forage left for Noolkisaruni’s
cattle, and the gaunt cows produce barely enough milk for their calves, leaving only a pittance for Noolkisaruni’s family and herdsmen. At left: Two months
after we visited, the Tarakuai family sent a message saying, “The chief has fewer than 50 cows and calves left from his large herd of more than 400, and it is
getting dire because the rains have not been adequate.” The family was only able to salvage the hides, which they sold.

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800–1900 23
800 The Maasai Herder • Kenya
milk, which allows it to be kept without spoil-
ing, or fresh milk. In drought years, she’s
lucky to get one cup of milk a day from her
cows, which she splits between the children
and the herdsman. Oftentimes, she herself
doesn’t eat until dinner.
“When I was growing up, meat was in
plentiful supply,” she says. “We had many
livestock. The drought was less frequent. A
goat was slaughtered ever y two days.” Today
they slaughter a goat only ever y week or so
to cull the herd and provide protein to the
children.
Three days ago they killed a goat. How
many people did it feed? She gestures
broadly at the distant houses dotting the
countryside: “It’s like a snack,” she says, “a
goat snack...like when you go and buy fried
potatoes in a shop. There are many of us,
so [one] goat is an instant meal.” When the
drought worsens, the animals are so skinny
that they don’t even kill them for the meat.
“We sell the skins and feed the [carcasses]
to the dogs,” she says.
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When times are good, she stocks up on
cabbage, potatoes, onions, and tomatoes.
In times of severe drought, she relies on
food aid to feed her family—beans, rice, and
wheat flour—which sometimes comes and
sometimes doesn’t. But even in drought, she
says, if visitors show up at her door, as a
Maasai wife she must give them refreshment.
Just this morning two clansmen who were
passing through stopped by. She gave them
tea and all of the milk she had.
Noolkisaruni’s greatest pleasure is her
infrequent trips to the local market. (Usually
the men in the family go.) While there, she
enjoys a food that she herself did not grow
up eating—irio. “It’s a food of the Kikuyu,”
she says (Kenya’s largest ethnic group). It’s
made of potatoes, corn, beans, and greens
cooked together into a porridge. “I asked…
how to make it,” she says, “so I could make
it for my children. It’s really good with animal
fat. Everybody loves it.”
Today, here in the village, her neighbors
arrive with sharp knives to help butcher the
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downed, pregnant cow. One of the men slits
its throat to kill it, then bleeds it out. A second
man slices the belly, pulls out the dead calf,
and sets it aside for the dogs. The butchering
of the mother cow, by both men and women,
is methodical and quick. The three men wait-
ing with their impromptu barbecue lay their
piece of meat across a few sticks and soon
smoke wafts across the sandy wash where
they work. The warm liver is given to several
little boys; they run off and eat it raw.
As most of the villagers begin to carr y
their por tions home across the flat, barren
landscape, one of the men cuts into the
stomach to unravel the cause of death. The
autopsy reveals a long knotted chain of dis-
carded plastic bags. Noolkisaruni says she
isn’t surprised: “The bags taste salty and
the cows like salt.” An earlier comment by
Chief Sammy—that they will never buy live-
stock from big towns because there the
animals feed on plastic bags—was strangely
prophetic: The modern world’s discards have
become a threat to their way of life.
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W H AT I E AT
 Before sunrise,
Noolkisaruni (top left)
helps a calf reunite
with its mother before
the morning milking.
The cattle will spend
the day on the arid
plain searching for
food. Later (top
right), village women
haul drinking water
from the reservoir dug
for them by an aid
organization. In the
afternoon, her family
and neighbors butcher
a pregnant cow (at
left) that couldn’t
walk. A neighbor
displays the cause: a
tangle of indigestible
plastic bags that was
lodged in the cow’s
stomach.

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800–1900 25
800 The Maasai Herder • Kenya

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 In the early morning
in her windowless,
round, dung-
and-mud house,
Noolkisaruni Tarakuai
rinses spoons in a
cooking pot as her
herder waits for his
breakfast of cornmeal
porridge—ugali—and
sweet hot tea before
setting off for the day
to graze the family’s
cattle on the southern
Kenyan plain. When
the cows find enough
to eat, there is also
milk to drink—either
fresh or soured for
preservation. The
amount of milk that
Noolkisaruni can draw
during drought is so
minimal that there’s
no need to preserve
it. It’s barely enough
to give just a taste
to the herdsman, her
husband, and her
children; there’s so
little, she collects
it in a tin cup rather
than a gourd. The
herdsmen, who can
be paid in money or in
goats, are people who
have lost their herd to
drought or predation
by wild animals.
They must work for
someone else until
they earn enough to
rebuild their herd.
The herdsmen live
with the family
full-time and only go
home during school
vacations, when the
children can take
care of the animals.

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