Color and beauty are the thoughts that strike me when I see a Maasai woman. Each morning, as I walk out to greet the women who work with us, I am impressed by their dramatic allure. With their long slender necks, ear and wrists adorned in layers of beaded jewelry, and fit bodies draped in colorful patterned shukas, they are both stately and voluptuous – a blend few cultures have achieved.

My husband & I live among the Maasai in Kenya and employ the women to handcraft jewelry. The business started 8 years ago as a way to help them through difficult times and has expanded beyond that early goal. As we began to build the business, we were sensitive to preserving the Maasai culture and not bringing change; instead, we wanted to create opportunity for them. In considering this, I found myself examining values, theirs and mine. Here are some of my first observations.

Maasai children are raised to look after the community first, then to be self-sustaining individuals – just the opposite of American children. While most American women handle the responsibilities of their lives without help, Maasai women pitch in together, cooking, caring for babies, mending the home, gathering wood and cleaning. Not a chore goes unshared.

An American woman, accustomed to doing things on her own, might feel trapped and stifled by such proximity. A Maasai woman, dropped into our world, would feel isolated and lonely, cut off from her traditional system of friends and family. She would view it as a world without joy.

In the Maasai society, where the group comes first, change involves the entire group and is a slow and cumbersome evolution that may take generations. Because individuals in this society tend to feel secure and less stressed, not many seek change. Americans can alter course without having to change the ideologies of their country and with utmost speed; hence our rapid evolution in just 227 years. Yet in our culture of individuals, without loving and trusted people close by, one often feels what the Maasai woman would feel if placed here – insecure, lonely and isolated – feelings often identified as a contributing factor to social violence.

Many people ask me what it is that makes the Maasai so happy, when, as perceived by westerners, they have nothing. My answer is that it’s something that our ancestors knew. Make family and friends the center of your universe. Reach out, for it is in the sharing that joy dwells. This is what the Maasai women practice and it’s what they have taught one individual American woman who lives among them.

AN ONGOING SERIES FEATURING THE FACES OF THE LEAKEY COLLECTION

Sales Consultant Jan Syvertsen

ME HOLDING A MONKEY & OBVIOUSLY NOT TOO HAPPY!

I’m from red dirt roads and pinching ants, from lush green grass and beautiful jacaranda. In the rainy season, the same is mud so thick you always get stuck, and rivers and streams make a road impassable. I am from tin roofs and fire baked bricks. I am from water that was never clear and milk that was thick with cream.

View of Mt. Longonot from my childhood home

I’m from beautiful views of Mt. Longonot and the wide open plains. I’m from drinking chai at the local dukas but always dreaming about the day someone would come from America with a bag of M&M’s! I’m from sneaking out of the dorm at night for long hikes on the railroad tracks, swinging on monkey vines and exploring caves along the way.

I’m from kick the can, homemade games, roller skates on the old school porch and riding bikes up and down the hills. I’m from playing basketball, soccer, volleyball, tennis and only once in awhile going to Naivasha to swim! I’m from listening to stories on an old reel-to- reel tape recorder and reading books for hours. I’m from vacations at Mombasa and only knowing an ocean with reefs and coral colorful and bright. I ’m from long, white, hard sandy beaches and shells with life still growing inside. I’m from watching rugby and not ever knowing much about football or baseball.

I’m from not knowing that the word prejudice existed until I moved to America. I’m from a place that was so beautiful you had to pinch yourself to realize you were alive and not dreaming. I’m from climbing trees and eating loquats til I was sick, picking passion fruit from the vines but never seeing an apple grow. I’m from eating little yellow bananas off the branch and asking a young boy, so wiry and strong, to climb a coconut tree to get me one that was fresh. I’m from chasing the monkeys away from our clothes line only to go inside and find that they had come anyway, walking down the line and unclipping the clothes! I’m from malaria and giardia and other things we won’t mention here!

Mt. Kilimanjaro – climbed in July 0f 1974

I’m from climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro and seeing the world from God’s view…all that He had made…so beautiful and perfect. I’m from borders and evacuations and always knowing that He was taking care of us in a foreign land. I am from a family who chose to serve others first and always cared about those who had less. I’m from a mom who could make fake cherry pie with almond flavoring and loquats! I’m from amazing July 4th celebrations that the US Embassy arranged and American Hot Dogs that TWA would fly in. I’m from flag- raising every Friday and singing the Kenyan National Anthem in Swahili. I still know it. I’m from a school where academics were high. I never knew that 95 could be an A! For us it was a B. I’m from a school with students from all over the world, whose parents lived in 17 different African countries.

I’m from a land where we rarely drove at night, but when we did, we were always searching for the eyes of a leopard that was often elusive. I’m from a land where the fog was so thick that every car had headlights that were yellow. I’m from finding a puff adder in my sister’s bedroom to seeing a leopard walk by my window at night. I’m from a land where animals roamed free, from camping trips out on the Mara to hunting trips as well. I am from pygmies and monkey meat in those early days, where my mom had to iron my diapers dry each night with 3 hours of electricity from a generator. I am from jungles, then plains, from mountains and the ocean, from a fireplace lit every night at 5 because the nights were cold. I am from the equator but an altitude of 7200 ft.

I am from Congo, then Kenya, but always an American underneath. I am now from a country very far from the land where I grew up, I have all the comforts that any American is accustomed to, but will never forget where I came from. I choose now to do what I can to make life better for those across the sea who live a much simpler life and don’t have the choices I have. I don’t believe they would change places with me today if they could. We choose now to just help where we can to make the burdens of their life just a little bit easier…when the rains don’t come and the crops don’t grow, when the cattle die and the children are sick, we are there to give them hope and to show that the mzungu (swahili for white man) across the sea does care and will help. Now all these years later, I count it a privilege to work for The Leakey Collection, to provide stores with the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of those they will never know but who are deeply appreciated by the beautiful people of Kenya.

Now I am a mom of four grown boys…married to a die-hard New Yorker and have grown to LOVE the New York Yankees and Giants, and as my sister once told me when I went back to Kenya only once for Christmas during my college days, with sadness in her voice…”you have become SO American!” Yep… it happens.

NOW!

I had grown rather complacent about walking around at night. It had been many months since we found the puffadder outside the kitchen tent, and this night I was tired, lugging my heavy computer case up the rock steps to our sleeping tent. Nose to the ground, thoughts a million miles away, it was at the very last second that my torch light fell across the python on the steps.

I was momentarily startled because we are far from the big rivers, but she was such a stunning animal and so beautiful, it took my breath away. I shouted for Philip to come see her before she disappeared in the dense, tall, dry grass but he couldn’t hear me over the negative banging of television news. She was not in the least frightened of me, nor interested in hurrying on her way so I shouted louder and louder until I finally raised a disinterested “WHAT?” from above.

Finally irritated by my rudeness, she mosied away, leaving Philip to glimpse just 2 feet of thick tip curving through the brush. It was enough to generate his curiosity, and so began a wrestling match requiring another three men. Dressed in only a kikoy, a light cotton cloth, around his waist and a torch in his hand, Philip followed her into the thorns, and after about 5 minutes, came out with a tight grip just behind her head. The other three grabbed her back end so she couldn’t constrict, but she was oily and slippery, valiantly fighting to escape a reception that was getting ruder by the minute from her point of view.

I had ditched my computer to grab my camera, and as we were stumbling up the steep rocky hill, struggling with the enormous lady, Philip’s kikoy began to make an untimely escape of its own! When he shouted for me to help, I grabbed his torch and put the handle in my mouth so my hands were free to continue photographing. That was the first, but not the last time, I tasted the putrid, oily, rank taste of python.

At the time, I was too busy laughing, stumbling, struggling to photograph and help hold the middle of what was obviously an enormous, writhing, angry snake weighing well over 100 pounds, to do more than wince at what I had just shoved into my mouth.

We got her to the top of the hill and measured her - around 14 or 15 feet - against the length of the tarpaulin of our verandah. Two large feed sacks were brought, and she was stuffed inside after all the photos were taken. The bag was double tied, and for her own safety, she slept inside our pick-up cab for the night. In the morning, she would be released down by the large river.

She was easily large enough to have taken our tall 9-year-old grandson had he been around, but we rather think she was on her way up to our tent after Gizzy, our 19-year-old cat.

Once she was safely tucked in for the night, and everyone calmed down from the excitement, the pungent, acrid, oily, dead fish smell of python overwhelmed our freed senses, and all ran for bucket showers. It was then that the taste of something so foul that there was nothing in my taste library with which to identify it, returned. Overloaded sensors registered a searing sensation in my mouth and throat as if someone had fried greasy, week old cod fish in my mouth, giving my upper stomach a sickening twist. Not even my full arsenal of Mint Listerine, toothpaste and bar soap made a dent in the foul taste which I eventually washed away with pots of tea and milk by the next afternoon.

The showers weren’t any more successful at removing her thick aroma; the tent stank of python for several days as did the truck.

The very next night, sitting on the same step I met the python, I found Gizzy waiting impatiently for her dinner to arrive. A few minutes either way, and we would have met the python later that night in our bed rather than on the steps up to the tent. It had been Gizzy’s lucky night!

On Sunday March 8, the global community observes International Womens Day. This event is a world wide celebration of the remarkable achievements of women everywhere in the political, social and economic fronts. To say “We’ve Come A Long Way Baby” is a big understatement as we take a step back to see how far women have really come in the past 100 years.

To show our appreciation and support for this remarkable event, we want to do our part by joining the blogging community and bring awareness of this occasion to our readers and others by participating in Bloggers Unite, a wonderful initiative by Blog Catalog to bring more social awareness into the “blog-o-sphere”.

While the themes across the globe vary, this year- the theme adopted by the United Nations is Women and men united to end violence against women and girls. International Women’s Day officially began nearly 100 years ago, in 1911. Meetings and demonstrations were organized throughout Europe by word of mouth- and now we have the world at our fingertips to share our stories. The organizers would be proud to see their passion and determination have paid off!

Numerous events are occurring throughout the country- including our friends at the Nob Hill Spa Boutique in San Fransisco. They have invited notable guest speakers for the following free lectures (RSVP by March 8-Kellie James at 415-345-2826 or kjames@huntingtonhotel.com):

Dr. Daphne Miller, Author of The Jungle Effect: A Doctor Discovers the Healthiest Diets From Around the World - Why They Work and How to Bring Them Home on March 10 at 6pm

Christine Switzer from the International Museum of Women on March 11 at 6pm