Scuffle in Maasailand

THERESE HAS PARKED in the middle of a dusty, deserted Kenyan road and perspires, perplexed, over one of our baffling maps. Seasoned adventure travelers, Therese and I rejected an organized safari and rented a car of our own, a rusty little four-wheel drive Suzuki, for our first visit to Africa.

I am sitting on the tailgate repairing a window in the car's rear cargo hold when two young Maasai girls materialize from the empty landscape and greet me with a gracious Swahili hello. "Jambo!" they shout.

"Jambo!" I call out to them, and they respond with winning smiles. They speak to me fast in Swahili and I apologize for my inability to understand them. "Pole pole," I say, and wave my hands palms down at the ground, indicating that they should slow down. It is nearly the only Swahili that I know aside from my jambo hello, and it's pretty much useless; they chatter on at me, beaming and gesturing and giggling like hyper young girls in any culture. There is nothing in their cheeriness to prepare me for what will follow.

We had been flying down a straight dirt highway raised above vast, flat fields sparsely dotted with acacia trees, the sky and savanna endless before us. Therese had been taking a rare turn behind the wheel, her fear of right-hand-drive, Third-World motoring relieved by the complete absence of other vehicles on the road. Our car rattled noisily and small stones and craters sent it hopping on its springs, the shock absorbers having long ago surrendered to Africa's highways. Therese sped giddily along a washboard stretch, and after a few minutes the latch of one rear vent wing snapped, making the glass smack loudly and repeatedly against its frame.

"Pitcha!" one of the girls now yells, striking a pose, and the other squeals with delight and does her own vamp. "Pitcha! Pitcha!" They giggle more, but I don't have my camera handy so I shake my head no. Using some spare bootlaces from my pack, I've settled on a series of knots that I think will hold our broken window and I return to the front passenger seat where I sit with the door open. The girls follow after me and I concur with Therese about their cuteness as we admire their lovely smiles. "Pitcha!" the first one insists again.

Every five seconds, it is said, someone in Maasailand has their picture taken, and in an attempt to fend off exploitation of the locals' famous photogeneity, guidebooks admonish tourists not to capture the Maasai on film without first negotiating a price. Someone in Nairobi told me that if you don't settle on a proper remuneration before you capture a Maasai on film, he may charge whatever he likes. Far from protecting the native culture, however, this arrangement has corrupted it in unusual ways. There is an expectation now by many natives that you will want to take their photo, and the only non-Swahili words many of them know are phrases used to negotiate their modeling fees.

Earlier in the day a young Maasai warrior had stood regally with his traditional spear and greeted us at a roadside restaurant where Therese and I had stopped for refreshment. At first sight, the Maasai people appeared just as I'd imagined from the National Geographics and TV documentaries of my childhood. They stand tall and proud, draped in colorful fabrics and beads. Heavy, gleaming clusters of golden rings hang from their ears, stretching their pierced lobes low towards their shoulders. Up close, I noticed on our roadside warrior's feet the familiar swoosh of a Nike logo and I was struck by how clean and white his new shoes were despite the red mud that surrounded us.

With a broad grin he gestured to our cameras. "Pitcha?!" he asked, but Therese and I declined, not wanting to bid for the privilege of a snapshot.

Now I am faced with a similar situation with these charming children. Therese's Nikon hangs around her neck and I hold it up to the girls without removing its large black lens cap. Pointing to myself and then them and then the camera, I ask slowly in English, "You want me, to take your picture, with this camera?"

They laugh and nod. "Hundre-dolla!" the first girl tells me.

"Oh, I don't think so," I snort, laughing at her joke.

But it is no joke, and our friendship is over. Her expression becomes dark and both girls' smiles vanish. Suddenly it dawns on me that by holding up Therese's camera I have given the impression that I've used it. These girls know that tourists must pay to take their photo, but they are too young or have been too isolated to understand how the camera works. Now they believe I am robbing them of their rightful fee—a fee that they have named and should be theirs for the asking.

"Start the engine," I whisper to Therese, "and let's go now." I look around nervously for others from the girls' unseen village, maybe a group of warriors in super-fast Nikes with their spears extended.

Therese, not sharing my sudden unease, is guffawing over my social blunder as I start to pull my door shut. The first girl grabs the frame of the door's open window with both hands and I fear that closing it will break her small fingers. Both girls' smiles are ancient history and now they scream Swahili curses at me, fire in their eyes.

I try to pry the girl's fingers from the window frame but as I release one hand's grip she grasps again with the other.

"Drive, Therese! Now!" I'm shouting, and Therese grinds the transmission, lurches forward a bit, and quickly stalls. She restarts and proceeds more smoothly this time, but now the second child has handed a large acacia limb to her friend who starts to wale on me through the open door. Both girls are screaming for their money.

Therese decides that she will laugh at me later when we get safely away, and she accelerates. While the two jog beside the car flinging epithets, I worry that the girl with the stick won't let loose her grip until we are dragging her along in the dirt, so I pry at her fingers once more. This time I succeed because her other hand is busy with the business of whomping on me with her makeshift club.

Therese steps more heavily on the gas and we roar away. I turn and look back as the girls' shaking fists and hollered invectives fade away in our swirling wake of pebbles and dust. We are flying again across the wide-open landscape, making our getaway, another adventure—perhaps another blow to my traveler's ego, if not my person—just a few rutted kilometers down the road.