801 



MASAI, TUEKANA, SUK, NANDI, ETC, 



444. TATTOOING ROUND A MASAI WOMAN S EYES 



no male Masai is ever seen 

 with beard and moustache. 

 The hair of the head is 

 shaved by the women, and 

 by the married men who 

 have ceased to be warriors. 

 It is even removed in the 

 same way from the heads 

 of children; but when a 

 Masai youth has reached 

 puberty, and is about to 

 become a warrior, he allows 

 the hair of his head to grow 

 as long as it will. TWcring 

 at the wool, and straighten- 

 ing it as far as he is able, 

 he plaits into it twisted 

 bast or thin strips of leather. 

 In this way the hair, with 

 its artificial accompaniments, is plaited into a number of wisps, and these, 

 coated with red clay and mutton fat, are gathered into pigtails, or 

 queues, the largest of which hangs down over the back, while another 

 droops over the forehead, and there may be one over each ear. The ends 

 of these queues are tightly bound round with string, which, like all 

 the rest of the coiffure, is thickly coated with grease and ochre. The 

 whole of the body in the young warriors is constantly anointed with the 

 same proportion of reddish clay and fat, with the result that they have 

 quite a raddled appearance, and look like statues in terra-cotta; for 

 everything about them may be coated with this preparation of a uniform 

 yellowish red. The Masai practise circumcision, and the clitoris in the 

 women is excised. Both these operations take place just before puberty, 

 between eight years and fifteen years of age. The circumcision of the 

 Masai has been described in Joseph Thomson's celebrated book. It may 

 be stated briefly that it differs from the same operation elsewhere in 

 Africa in that the frcenuw is also cut, and that a portion of the prceputium 

 is drawn down below the glans, where it heals in a large excrescence of skin. 

 This is sometimes so tumid as to give the organ the appearance of being 

 provided with a double glans. 



The Masai men do not mar or decorate their skins with patterns in 

 scars or in tattooing; but I have noticed on the faces of the women in 

 the Naivasha District that parallel lines (see illustration) are apparently 

 burnt on the skin round the eyes or on the forehead. I could not 



