As rotas central e periférica e o modelo ARM

According to Kinyaol Portoboli a Maasai elder, the Maasai have been making use of mutual assistance systems for hundreds of years, and this has enabled them to persist in natural disasters such as draughts and famine. He observed that there are two distinct categories of Maasai mutual assistance systems, the individual based and collective based mutual assistance systems. In the individual assistance system, the loans of food and livestock, and gifts may be made from one person to another. He termed this type as the one constituting the majority of transactions and takes place between herders. The basis of such assistance can be close family ties (patrineal and affinal), personal friendship between recipient and donor in their friendship as age mates. He stressed that these individual gifts or loans are based on the expectation of future reciprocity.

The second category is collective, clan based mutual assistance, He said that this constitutes the core of mutual assistance practiced by the Maasai in most rural areas operated at community level, and is known as ewoloto “through its operation poverty stricken families are enabled to move back and toward self sustaining pastoralism once again.” He further added that this is a distinct and consciously maintained system of mutual assistance within clans. He stressed that the objective of the system is to assist families that cannot help themselves to break out of the vicious cycle of poverty. This forms one of the four other types of engalata.

2.3.1 Types of Collective Clan Based Mutual Assistance Systems.

The first engalata enkaputee is the collecting of cattle among clan members for a man to pay his bride wealth in a single transaction and where the livestock demanded exceed his resources. He noted that these marriage transactions usually involve higher bride wealth payments than usual, in this respect; no further claims can be made subsequently upon the husband.

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The second type of collective clan based mutual assistance, known as engalata embolwa, this involves collecting of cattle from among clan members for a man to pay back bride wealth and other marriage payments received earlier for a daughter, in case of divorce or a broken engagement.

The third type of collective clan based mutual assistance is known as engalata oloikop, this type of mutual assistance comes into effect when clan members collect cattle to pay “blood wealth”, a traditional payment made when one Maasai killed another accidentally during protecting their livestock from predators.

Ewoloto, is the fourth type and the most important collective, clan based mutual assistance, according to Kinyaol Portoboli, it denoted the collection of cattle from among the clan members to assist a destitute family so that it can be able to stand on its own. As mentioned earlier that in Maasai wealth is measured in terms of the number of cattle and children a man has. In this respect ewoloto, becomes very crucial here to prevent a poverty stricken wife to run back to her clan with the children. Which leads to loss in wealth of clan, as Kinyaol Portoboli remarked, “we collect cattle to feed the hungry children who are dying, who are our children.”

2.3.2 Importance of Mutual Assistance within Maasai People.

It is apparent that mutual assistance systems within the Maasai society constitutes a very crucial part of the culture. It has maintained kin relationships, and helped families to break out from the menace of poverty in terms of the clan joining hands to collect cattle to assist the family in need so that it could again stand on its own as a self sustaining pastoralist family.

What is interesting here is that within the assistance systems, the main objective that is noted is the maintenance of brotherhood, each one looking over the welfare of one another. Indeed this forms a very interesting and important philosophy of the mutual assistance systems.

2.4 Summary

The lands that the Maasai people occupy have a major ecological potential in Tanzania and they have been under pressure since the colonial period and after independence the pressure on these lands did not seize. These land squeezes have limited their access to large areas of

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grazing and important water resources. Cattle play a central role in the lives of the Maasai, cattle is not only a measure of wealth, but also a means of transaction and a basis of inclusion and exclusion. The Maasai are very proud of their distinctive culture and social networks. The strong adherence to social networks especially the collective clan based mutual assistance systems, play a significant role in the communal nature of pastoral production system. Mutual assistance systems also play a significant role in assisting families in crisis.

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