The semi-nomadic cattle herders of the savanna grasslands of southern Kenya and northern Tanzania — a Nilotic, Maa-speaking people whose age-set system and famous warrior grade, the moran, organize a society historically centered on cattle pastoralism, and who have spent a century fighting the loss of their grazing land to colonial treaties, ranches, and the wildlife parks that turned their pastures into tourist attractions.
Picture the savanna near the Kenya–Tanzania border, where flat-topped acacia trees stand over yellow grass and herds of cattle move slowly toward water. A young man in a red cloth walks beside them with a thin stick. This is the image the world keeps of the Maasai: tall figures in red, spears in hand, leaping straight up into the air. Travel brochures sell it, and film crews chase it. But the men in those photographs are also losing the very grassland under their feet. The same beauty that fills the postcards is fenced off for lions and tourists, and the herders are pushed to the edge of land their grandfathers grazed freely.