THE MAASAI

This photographic portfolio entitled “THE MAASAI” is the result of a period of one month lived with them from Kenya to Tanzania. Earth, fire, sun, blood: red is the color of the Maasai. Red is the earth, “Osinyai”, of the rough path that, a two hour drive from Nairobi, plunges into the Kenyan highlands crossed by arid rivers, in this ignored corner of the bush. A dozen low and narrow huts made of branches covered with a mixture of earth and dung, which the women build and rebuild that do everything, housing, food and milking the cattle. Tattered children dressed in variegated fabrics, old cloths draped in colorful fabrics, sparkling pearl necklaces and bracelets.

In the land of the Maasai, nothing is the same as before: the extension of the outskirts of the capital, first of all, has made these nomads withdraw, fleeing from civilization and refusing to mix with other ethnic groups. They bought their land which these shepherds, indifferent to land ownership and reluctant to agriculture, abandoned. The state created huge animal reserves, which further expropriated them of their territories. Gradually they withdrew to Tanzania, where today they emigrate in large numbers, there were also those years of terrible drought, which saw their herds wither.