Daily Times

With beaming smiles, their hair dyed a red ochre and adorned with a ceremonial headdress of ostrich feathers, the young Maasai men are busy taking selfies. They have just completed the first day of Eunoto, a traditional ritual marking the transition from young warrior to adulthood. “Today we are becoming men,” 22-year-old medical student Hillary Odupoy says proudly, wearing sunglasses and a string of pearls across his bare chest. Aged between 18 and 26, the young men came in their hundreds to the village of Nailare in southwestern Kenya, all from the same generation of “morans” (“warriors” in the Maasai language), a status they have held for a decade.

Many left their homes in the region to work or study in the cities of Kisii or Nairobi, or like Odupoy, further afield in the town of Machakos which lies more than seven hours away by road. “It is one of the biggest ceremonies we have in our life. We can never meet in such multitude. It unites the Maasai community,” explains Odupoy. All wear red, the sacred colour of the Maasai — from their hair which is coated in a mixture of ochre and oil to their traditional plaid cloth shukas.

This rite of passage brings together the families of the morans as well as local inhabitants and officials, in all several thousand people. For five days, the Eunoto ceremony features traditional guttural chants, single-file dances on one leg, and the adumu — the famous Maasai jump. Cows are sacrificed and their blood drunk by the young men, whose hair is shaved from their heads by their mothers. They then abandon the warrior’s sword for the fimbo, the walking stick of the “elders”.