Mennonite
Central
Committee

Kenyan women make a living through Maasai tradition

January 26, 2006
Tim Shenk

Elizabeth Mboye used to think that, as a woman, she would never earn an income, but today she is paid for a job she loves to do.

Namayiana

Mboye works as a jewelry maker for Namayiana, an association of women artisans in Kenya's rural Rift Valley. Mboye and her colleagues are Maasai — an ethnic group with a proud tradition of making and wearing colorful, beaded necklaces, earrings and other jewelry.

Several afternoons a week, Mboye sits with a dozen other Namayiana artisans in the shade of an acacia tree beside the group's storehouse. They chat and laugh together as they sew beads on leather bracelets and wire ornaments. Sometimes their voices rise in Maasai folksongs.

"I enjoy almost everything about Namayiana," says Mboye, a youthful mother of eight. "I also enjoy working with other women like me."

Ten Thousand Villages

Namayiana sells some of its products to Ten Thousand Villages, which markets fairly traded international handicrafts in the United States and Canada. Ten Thousand Villages is a program of MCC, and a handicraft designer serving with MCC in Kenya is helping Namayiana develop some of its products.

Changing Traditions

Most of Namayiana's 100 members are from families that raise cattle for a living. Traditionally, men tend and sell the cattle, while women work almost exclusively on household chores. By earning money themselves — usually for the first time in their lives — the women of Namayiana are raising their status in their families and communities.

"Instead of asking their husbands or sons to purchase everything, they can also provide," says Catherine Mututua, a local woman who is the manager of Namayiana.

Few of the women have any formal education, but most are using what they earn to buy school supplies and pay school fees for their children.

"Blessing"

Mututua says that the women chose the name Namayiana, which means "blessing" in the Maasai language, because they considered it a blessing for so many women to work together. In the past, some husbands have been suspicious of all-female gatherings.

"They would call it loitering, wasting time," Mboye says. "In short, he would beat you. ... But things are good these days. Things have changed."

Mboye says that her husband now respects the fact that she helps support the family by working for Namayiana. She leaves home more often to work at Namayiana or shop for household needs. However, Mboye is also able to make jewelry for Namayiana at home and still spends much of her time there.

Education

Like most of the women of Namayiana, Mboye was not able to attend school as a girl. Her family's traditional lifestyle required moving from place to place throughout the year to find pasture for cattle. Mboye's father said he loved her too much to leave her at a boarding school.

Today Mboye's income from Namayiana helps her family stay in one place throughout the year. Her younger children attend a primary school nearby, and she sends her older children to a boarding school.

Maasai Traditions

Mboye recognizes that her children need to be prepared to live in a changing world, but she wants them to preserve their Maasai heritage too.

"There are some good things that we will never want to lose," Mboye says.

Among the Maasai traditions that Mboye and her husband teach their children are storytelling, caring for animals, singing folksongs and making beaded jewelry for themselves.

"Even the ones I have in boarding school, when they come home, we all sit on the ground to work on beadwork," she says.

 

MCC in Kenya