Nebulisi, Ole’s niece, drinking water from a yellow jug. I was taken by how easily Nebulisi held up the 20-liter water container, sucking every drop of water out of it.

Left: Ngalai, from a neighboring boma, hand-stitching engoti, jugs made from gourds to carry water and milk collected from cows. Women gather with children during the day and stitch beadwork jewelry and engoti gourds. Right: The gourds are collected in the fields, where they grow wild. They are scraped of seeds and pulp, dried, and then sealed.

I met Matagoi with her baby Nginyikelai at Ole’s boma. During the day, the women and children gather to talk, help each other, make jewelry, and share in child care.

Ole, who invited me to visit his boma (cluster of huts where the Maasai live).

Most Maasai still choose to wear their traditional cloth called ormisimbiji, beaded jewelry, sandals, and hairstyles.

A beach hut in Michamvi Kae, a resort town on the eastern part of the Zanzibar archipelago, where young Maasai men sell their people’s crafts to tourists, along with the usual tourist gear.

Attendees on the British Columbia Provincial Legislature lawn gather on July 1, 2021, to remember the Indigenous children who died while attending residential schools in Canada. Over several decades, Indigenous children were taken from their families and placed in residential schools. Their languages, cultures, spiritual beliefs, sense of identity, and connections to their ancestral lands were taken away from them, just as they were from adopted children during the Sixties Scoop in Canada. Photo: David Rapport

The steps of the British Columbia Provincial Legislature at the July 1, 2021, First Nations memorial gathering. Many Indigenous children in residential schools died from all sorts of abuse and, likely, broken hearts. Photo: David Rapport