Morani - The Warriorhood Tradition of the Kenyan Tribes

The Samburu people from Northern Kenya are closely related to the people of the Maasai tribe in Southern Kenya and Northern Tanzania. Like most tribes of East Africa the Samburu and the Maasai practice a rigid classification system of their community into age sets and age grades. An age set describes a generation and each individual of the age set remains permanently attached to this set. The age grade (sometimes also called 'age class') describes a stage within the age set. It is the responsibility of the elders of a tribe to initiate a new age set with a specific new name. The initiation of a new age set is always accompanied by a big ceremony, which is certainly one of the most important events of a Maasai or Samburu man's life. The elders of a tribe also determine at which age the young boys enter their first important age grade, the age grade of the warriorhood. The Maa language of the Samburu and Maasai for "warrior" is "moran".