I was looking at satellites view of the area around Arusha, trying to find the exact village where we will be building the school and I saw a large patch of red ground. Zooming in I started seeing funny circles on the ground and there they were, the Maasai villages! I kind of thought they existed only in vernacular architecture books, but there are plenty of them scattered around this area...
To be more precise one should call them permanent homesteads, in the Maa language enkang. They are built on high ground and people would only live there part of the year, spending the other part in temporary settlements in the plains. Now they tend to live there all the time, or move directly to the town and cities.
The smallest of the three homesteads in this photo has a diameter of 50 m. The dark line around it is a fence of thorny plants used to keep in the cattle and keep out predators. The Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture (Paul Olivier) says that the houses are oval, but here they look pretty circular, don’t they? To be verified on site.
When a girl marries, at about 14 years of age, she builds her own house with the help of other women in the homestead. The house remains her property and no one can enter it without her permission, not even the husband. Does that mean that women have a rather strong role in Maasai society? If I look at the interior of the house, something tells me that it is probably not so.

In the plan you can see that there is a man’s bed and a woman’s bed. Well, first of all the man’s bed is much larger, second here it is not said, but the children sleep with the mother. So a smaller bed for maybe 4-5 people... Plus, the man has one bed in each of his wives’ houses.
Yes, they say it is a patriarchal society. We will see.