MY BRIEF HISTORY

Mathew Ole Lona

I am not at sure about the date I was born. Through many inquiries, however, I have come to believe that the period must lie between late 1956 and early 1957.

When I was initiated to be a Maasai warrior by the rite of circumscion, it was like I was enlightened, that, it was the same day I was born. From there-on, my official birth date became December, 28th 1956.

I was born in the village officially known as Lemanyata in the land called Olkokola, situated in Arusha, the northern region of Tanzania bordering Kenya. It is at the slopes of a big Meru mountain, several kilometers from the snowing Kilimanjaro Mountain. The seldom volcano erupting mountain of Lengai can be seen far away jutting from the flat  Maasai savannah.

My father was a World War II veteran. He told us from 1941 to 1946 he fought as a rifleman, all the way from Kenya to Sinai, through Abyssinia country. He was discharged at Kenya with a rank of a private soldier and no longer a good Maasai warrior but a fierce soldier, honest like a child and workaholic.

My father learned the importance of school when he was at the war. He learned a little writing and reading. The kind soldier who taught him must have used hard and straight sticks on the ground for my father’s handwritings were stout, straight characters with precise angles and never rounded.

Even though, this helped me  to go to school at age of seven, a remarkable little age to start school at that time in Maasai land of Olkokola where most had never even thought of going to school at all.

It was never my father’s plan to let me school beyond knowing writing and reading. I heard him telling my mother; a beautiful daughter of a Maasai ‘foreseer’; “ I want this boy just to open an eye. Too much time at school will dent his good Maasai characteristics and attitude of shepherds”

And he was right.

My father had up to 500 herd of cattle, close to 700 sheep and goats and where looked at in 4 groups of nomadic life. However, he maintained a steady home for his family of 4 wives and about 30 children at Olkokola. My own mother had 6 children; 4 boys and 2 girls.

I will never forget the first day my father took me to start school. He made me march in a soldier style, him shouting to me;  left, right, turn left, about turn and so on, the military language of tasteless Kiswahili and chopped English. He wanted the head shaking on-lookers to know that I was the real son of a tough soldier.

Unfortunately, it turned out that day was Sunday and as he commanded me into the supposed school building, I found a white man teaching some children about Enkai, a Maasai word for God.  Thinking my father erred; I came out and told him. He dryly smiled and said; “ It is all part of foreign knowledge I want you to acquire”

Once joining school, I was forced to like it because it was a lot easier than looking after the animals. Looking after animals is very tough. It is done alongside of dangerous wild animals, in very hot plains, extremely lonely life for a young boy and militaristic life from the seniors.

However, I was forced to do it during the school holidays. The seniors assigned to me dangerous routes to take animals through because they hated my schooling. They believed schooling was kind of lazing around.

I faced the first cultural shock in 1968.  I had passed well the fourth grade examination and went to a boarding school in Arusha town. I found pupils and grown-up school staff from various tribes. I was more often surprised to find some of tenets of Maasai culture applied differently in this way.

Getting away by cheating and lying is a fashionable act among    pupils. The one who confess gets flogged. In Maasai, it is vice versa.

Pupils are taught about obedience. In Maasai, the youngest is always at the service of the older. It is inculcated into youngsters by severe physical punishment.

Pupils steal items without asking. In Maasai, there exist un-written rule that youngsters are allowed to steal foods if they overwhelmed with hunger and no other means of getting it and they have great ingenuity in this.  For other things, the punishment of stealing diminishes if there had been a request that was refused.

Telling the truth and to be frank is adored and most revered habit in Maasai. I found this habit tend to be seen as if associated with ‘un-civilized people’, If you are frank and truthful, you look like a fool.

A Maasai youngster who goes wrong is sure that by telling the truth, not only he/she saves her skin from physical punishment but also raises her/his esteem in the community.

I was also amazed by the way elders interact with pupils, not official as the way Maasai do between age-sets. There were again array of  items and services that I will now say are very normal and trivial but took me a long time to learn how to use.

In short, most of the time I was really a ‘bush boy’.

I was good in my studies though, especially mathematics. I was; the bush boy - leading most of the times in examinations results. That made teachers and other pupils more astounded than I was to the new environment I found myself in.

Later after three years, in 1971, I joined a secondary school also near Arusha town. I took science subjects. I had a friend; and still to-date with him, who was taking arts subjects. He liked reading English novels and as he finished reading, he would let me read also. It was from this juncture I developed the hobby of reading novels and writing stories.

In 1975 I went to a high school in Dar Es Salaam. I remember I was thrown out of mathematics class by an East German teacher for reading English novels. Actually I found that mathematics was easy and could use that time to read something else not being taught at the school.

After high school, it was part of the country’s school curriculum to participate in a National Service. For the whole of 1977 I learned military ways and I told my father. He was very happy but was very surprised that I did not know well how to work fast with rifles and other non-automatic guns. It was later he found rifles are no longer used in wars but only the automatic guns.

In 1978 I went to college to study Building Economics and finished in 1981. My first job was with a Consulting Engineering firm in Arusha and remained there until 1984.
From 1984 to 1994 I worked with a Lutheran church in Arusha as their projects coordinator. It was within this time, in 1988, I went to Nairobi to study management and at the same year, I went to study Projects Management in Scotland and was awarded MSc.

I married in 1991 and have two sons. I have also adapted my niece as part of my family and she became the eldest among our children.

Since 1994 I worked as a consultant to social and construction projects and also facility management and based in Arusha.

My wife is a community development worker and works with the rural people. My children attended rural schools though we leave in urban area.

Whenever I am not occupied, I attend Maasai traditional councils as an elder.

It is from this background, being with my family in lively evenings I am able to get much of my story themes.

Mathew Ole Lona