BY SIYABONA Africa
Cattle, goats, sheep, and camels, play a vital role in the Samburu way of life and culture. The Samburu are highly dependent on their livestock for survival and as a heritage. Their diet comprises mostly of milk and occasionally blood from their cows.
The women are responsible for picking vegetables and roots, caring for children, and fetching water. Samburu girls usually help their mothers with domestic chores. The Samburu are a gerontocracy, the elders rule the tribe.
Once a boy has been circumcised he is considered a Moran (a warrior). The men are placed into age sets, and as a group move from one social position to another. From child to Moran, to junior elder and finally to elder.
The traditional dress of the Samburu tribe is a striking red cloth wrapped like a skirt and a white sash. This is adorned with many colorful beaded earrings, bracelets, anklets, and necklaces. Each piece of jewelry worn represents the status of the wearer. Traditionally the Samburu do not use any instruments to accompany their music or dance.
The Samburu Today
Just like the Maasai, the Samburu people are under pressure from their government to settle into more permanent villages. They have resisted this proposal thus far since a permanent settlement would disrupt their entire way of life. And it will be difficult to grow and maintain crops on a permanent site.
Samburu marriages ceremonies
The initiation ritual for the Samburu establishes the transition to adulthood and consists, like in other populations, the practice of circumcision, a ceremony that takes place around the age of 15.
During the ceremony, the boy is shaved, gifted new shoes, and is covered with a sheepskin on which the mother has sprinkled grease and coal dust.
Circumcision is practiced at the door of the boy’s home with the assistance of an elder, and like among the Maasai, the boy should not display fear or even wince during the cut, lest he branded the unenviable tag of a coward.
After the ceremony the young man receives gifts, food, and a bow and arrows; his mother wears a necklace made with black and white beads that indicates that since then his son has become a moran or lmorran, i.e. a true warrior.
During recovery, usually a month, the now young man stays in his mother’s hut, after which he leaves the village to go learn to hunt birds and other small game with the bow and arrows received as a gift.
When Morans return to the camp, they are blessed by their mothers with an ostrich feather soaked in milk, in a ceremony where a bull is slaughtered. But the Morans must swear not to eat meat in the presence of women and from that moment onwards he begins to smear red ocher on his body.
The main occupation of a moran is to defend the livestock from other communities. After 10 years of their lives spent as warriors, the Samburu boys move on to the next step and become Ipayan, or young elders, a juncture at which they also marry and start to have children.
Marriage entails a complex ritual that begins with the groom engaging in negotiations with the bride’s family to obtain the consent to marriage.
The groom is required to deliver eight Oxen to the future father-in-law as a pledge and procure gifts to be donated to the bride. Great care is taken in the preparation of the gifts, which usually consist of two goatskins, a similar number of copper earrings, a milk container, and a sheep.
The groom will also provide several heads of cattle to be sacrificed during the marriage ceremony.
In observance of tradition, the bride is also circumcised at the dawn of the wedding day, though this rite has now become rare after the national government outlawed it, terming it female genital mutilation. The groom leads the cattle to the house of the bride’s mother, and after some have been slaughtered, the marriage is considered solemnized.
The wedding party begins with the division of the ox meat while the elderly bestow blessings and put butter on the head of the bride’s father.
The next day the bride must leave her mother’s house and move to her husband’s village, she has to travel all the way to her new home without ever looking back; on her arrival, two lines of elderly bless the new couple.
In the new hut, the bride lights up a fire, using two sticks rubbed over dried donkey dung. The fire must not go out until the new family moves elsewhere.
The taboo of the bride should not look over her shoulder on her way to her new house is associated with a Samburu legend that tells how the elephants were once human beings.
The tale has it that a long time ago a young bride was about to get ready to leave her family’s house and her father gave her precise instructions on how to go there and warned her against looking back. But the girl was so sad to leave the home that she could not resist to take a last glance of where she had grown up
During the night, the Nkai God, angered by the disobedience, punished her, her body swelled until it broke the hut’s roof-and turned into a majestic elephant.
The Samburu believe that all elephants descend from this first girl-become-elephant and that the elephant and the Samburu people have the same blood ties!
The popular belief tells that if the elephants come across the body of a dead man they place bundles of grass or branches on his grave. Similarly, if a Samburu comes across a skull of an elephant, he takes a bundle of green grass, spits on it, and rolls it inside the cavities of the skull. This is considered a sign of respect and blessing, as the green grass is a symbol of peace, while the spit is the rain, which is considered a divine gift for the community.
Another rite practiced by Samburu concerns female fertility that is regarded as one of the greatest values.
The wizard performs a fertility ritual that involves placing a mud figure at the front of the door of the woman’s house to ward off evil spirits away. After a wee, a ceremony is conducted, during which the husband invites the entire village, sacrifices a bull whose fat is smeared on the belly of his wife while she recites the “God will give you a son” prayer.
A childless woman is mocked by people and insulted, the walls of her hut are smeared with cow dung.
Even death has its ceremony, although the Samburu usually do not bury their dead. As a matter of fact, only the very elderly and children below one year are buried.
Once dead, the elderly are shaved and placed on the skin they used for sleeping with their face turned towards the sacred mountain, the residence of God. The burial site is not far from the village, the tomb is made easy to identify so that people can always place a green sprig as a way of greeting!
A dead child is buried inside the hut, close to the fire, and the family abandons the hut. The corpses of all those who are not buried are placed on the ground out of the village.
