> By Roland Francis. Two significant thought-provoking news events were made > known last week. Teriano Lesancha a young woman, just graduated with a > Bachelor's in Social Work from Toronto's Ryerson University. The > University's President along with her mentor and Social Work professor > accompanied her to her village in Kenya and conducted a unique convocation > ceremony to the joy of all her villagers. There was much exchanging of cows > and hugs between fierce warriors and reticent Canadians. She was the first > Masai woman to achieve that level of education.
Roland, The Masai are a smart tribe. In fact, they are one of the few tribes that have managed to enter the 21st Century with most of their customs and religious believes intact. A Masai was Prime Minister of Tanzania and at least two were Kenyan Vice-Presidents. One of the Kenyan Vice-Presidents was the child of a Goan man and Masai women. Our medical doctor at the Govt hospital we used to go to in the 1960's, was a Masai women. If you google "Masai women with PhD's", you will find that a lot of Masai women have earned one. And that to in almost every field. Your statement that Teriano Lesancha is the first Masai women to earn a Bachelor's degree is a really lame one, the product of laziness. Anyone, but anyone, can parrot what they have just read in the Toronto newspapers. As an anecdote, when the Catholic Masai P.M. (and at the time Nyerere's heir) was killed in a car crash in the 1980's, the country found out that he had four wives. He married the first one in church. Since he could not marry the others in church, he did so by tribal custom and then registered the polygamous marriages with the civic authorities. One of his widows has been quoted as saying, and this is a rough translation, "I preferred to be the third wife of him, a first class man, than the first wife of a third class man." For those interested, here is a link to a recent article on a Masai women who is strongly in love with playing cricket. I posted this earlier on another forum: http://www.dailynews.co.tz/index.php/features/popular-features/8990-maasai-girl-strongly-in-love-with-cricket ML04 1202EST Japanese proverb of the day: "A person in love mistakes a pimple for a dimple."
