The Maasai are an Indigenous peoples African ethnic group of semi-nomadic people located in Kenya and northern Tanzania. Due to their distinctive customs and dress and residence near the many game parks of East Africa, they are among the most well-known African ethnic groups internationally....
 in the first half of the twentieth century, although some still keep bees. The reason for this transition is mostly one of social prestige. The Maasai look down upon hunter-gatherer

Hunter-gatherer

A hunter-gatherer society is one whose primary List of subsistence techniques involves the direct procurement of edible plants and animals from the wild, foraging and hunting without significant recourse to the domestication of either....
 peoples, calling them Dorobo

Dorobo

Dorobo is a derogatory umbrella term for several unrelated hunter-gatherer groups of Kenya and Tanzania.In the past 150 years, many of these peoples have assimilated to the pastoralist economy of neighbouring peoples , and have, in the process, language shift their own languages....
 ('the ones without cattle'), and many Yaaku for a certain time considered the Maasai culture superior to their own. As a result of this decision the Yaaku almost completely gave up their Cushitic language Yaaku

The Yiaku (often Yaaku, falsely Mukogodo-Maasai) are a people living in the Mukogodo forest west of Mount Kenya

Mount Kenya

Mount Kenya is the highest mountain in Kenya, and the second highest in Africa . The highest peaks of the mountain are Batian , Nelion and Lenana ....
, a division of the Laikipia District

Laikipia District Kenya

Laikipia District is one of the seventy-one districts of Kenya of Kenya, located on the Equator in the Rift Valley Province of the country. The district has two major urban centres: Nanyuki to the southeast, and Nyahururu to the southwest....
 of Rift Valley Province, Kenya

Kenya

The Republic of Kenya is a country in East Africa. It is bordered by Ethiopia to the north, Somalia to the northeast, Tanzania to the south, Uganda to the west, and Sudan to the northwest, with the Indian Ocean running along the southeast border....
. Former hunter-gatherer

Hunter-gatherer

A hunter-gatherer society is one whose primary List of subsistence techniques involves the direct procurement of edible plants and animals from the wild, foraging and hunting without significant recourse to the domestication of either....
s and bee-keepers, the Yaaku have partly assimilated to the pastoralist culture of the Maasai

Maasai

Yaaku language

Yaaku is an endangered Afro-Asiatic languages language spoken in Kenya. It is Cushitic languages, but its position within that family in unclear....
 for the Eastern Nilotic

Eastern Nilotic languages

The Eastern Nilotic languages are one of the three primary branches of the Nilotic languages, themselves belonging to the Eastern Sudanic languages subfamily of Nilo-Saharan languages; they are believed to have begun to diverge about 3,000 years ago, and have spread southwards from an original home in Equatoria in the far south of Sudan....
 Maasai language

Maasai language

The Maasai language is an Eastern Nilotic languages language spoken in Southern Kenya and Northern Tanzania by the Maasai people, numbering about 800,000....
 between 1925 and 1936. The Maasai variant they speak nowadays is called Mukogodo-Maasai.

The Maasai are an indigenous African ethnic group of semi-nomadic people located in Kenya and northern Tanzania. Due to their distinctive customs and dress and residence near the many game parks of East Africa, they are among the most well known of African ethnic groups. They speak Maa, a member of the Nilo-Saharan language family that is related to Dinka and Nuer, and are also educated in the official languages of Kenya and Tanzania: Swahili and English. The Maasai population has been variously estimated as 377,089 from the 1989 Census or as 453,000 language speakers in Kenya in 1994 and 430,000 in Tanzania in 1993 with a total estimated as "approaching 900,000" Estimates of the respective Maasai populations in both countries are complicated by the remote locations of many villages, and their semi-nomadic nature.

Their Religion

The Masai call their god Enkai, who is believed to appear in many forms and objects, among which are the moon, mountains and colors. An interesting point is that Enkai is believed to be both male and female – uncommon to many other religions.

A priest is called a Laibon. The priests are believed to descend from God – that’s why they have authority over religious matters. They are ascribed the power to give prophesies and to heal. More on the page about Masai culture.

Mount Kilimanjaro

Kilimanjaro with its three volcanic cones, Kibo, Mawenzi, and Shira, is an inactive stratovolcano in north-eastern Tanzania rising 4,600 m (15,100 ft) from its base (and approximately 5,100 m (16,700 ft) from the plains near Moshi), and is additionally the highest peak in Africa at 5,891.8 metres (19,330 ft), providing a dramatic view of the surrounding plains.