Harvesting the Wisdom and Water with the Maasai

My name is Deepak Ramola, I am an educator and poet based in India. For the last 11 years, through my organisation Project FUEL, I have been documenting life lessons of people from all around the world.

In 2018, on a research project in Tanzania, I had the honour of meeting one of the world’s oldest and most culturally rich communities, the Maasai.

During the journey, I met a young Maasai boy named Mbayani who heads a social impact organization called Vijana Inspiring Foundation. Mbayani was the first in his family to attend school as conventionally the tribe did not consider it imperative for children to be sent to school.

He mentioned that his mother had played an important role in convincing his father to let him pursue an education.

Sensing my enthusiasm and curiosity, Mbayani offered to take me to his village located in the dry lands of Arusha, Tanzania to meet his family and community.

After an hour and a half drive on the long, beautiful roads that lead to the Serengeti National Park we arrived in Monduli, a small village with huts (called ‘Bomas’) sprinkled across the landscape.

Mama Mary, Mbayani’s mother and a strong Maasai woman, shared with me that monsoon is her favourite season of the year as it is the only time she gets to rest in the afternoon.

On all other days, she walks more than 9 hours to fetch water for the house and her cattles like many other women and young girls in the community. Due to this problem, many girls have to skip school to assist at home.

Our conversations resulted in a dream. The dream to build a community centre where the community could meet and discuss concerns like water harvesting, education for children due to lack of accessibility to a school and livelihood opportunities for the women.

I wanted to do something to assist Mama Mary and hundreds of others like her in the village. After a collective discussion with the tribe and local leaders, construction of a community centre along with a water harvesting unit was decided upon through the Wise Wall Project.

Under the Wise Wall Project we document, design and strengthen the wisdom of rural communities and marginalised villages, through Project FUEL’s celebrated methodology using art and action.

We paint the houses in the village with their life lessons, making it one of world’s first set of village of life lessons.

We invited Mbayani to visit us in India and experience the previous Wise Wall projects we executed in Uttarakhand, India. He witnessed the open air gallery of Saur and took notes of ways he could use these learnings back home in Tanzania.

Once the vision for the collaboration was set, along with my team, I began gathering support of people who might be open and willing to offer their help both monetarily or in kind.

Vijana Inspiring Foundation, donated a piece of land to build the centre in a prime location, closer to the main highway.

Inspiring architects from Windows to Vernacular created a blueprint for the community centre that is ecologically sensitive and sustainable.

Local partners like the Lions Club of Dar Es Salaam, and Arusha City pledged to be our on ground support system and even organized an medical health check-up and eye-camp for the community.

One of the world's leading solar energy solutions Vikram Solar Limited pledged their support to powering the centre with solar energy.

In 2020, with incredible support from individuals, organisations and local partners we successfully achieved this ambitious vision to create a safe space for the community to learn, grow, share and teach.

With the COVID-19 restrictions placed both in India and Tanzania, we were finding it difficult to start the second phase of the project— painting the community centre with the wisdom of the tribe.

In December 2021, as the pandemic restrictions eased up, I traveled with my team of artists and filmmakers, to the Losimingori village to gather cultural wisdom of the Maasai and document their life lessons.

Under the vast blue sky, with the dry lands of the village spread across the geography, we joined hands with the villagers to bring their stories to life through art.

The life lessons were beautifully shaped into artworks by Advithi Emmi. She was assisted by curious women and young kids who picked up paintbrushes for the first time yet created exquisite artworks.

The walls of the community centre became a blank canvas for Poornima Sukumar, who depicted the cultural traditions and lifestyle of the Maasai through large-scale murals.

We walked with Mama Mary on her long journey to collect water.

And joined the people as they held a celebration in the honour of their newly elected community chief.

On Christmas Day of 2021, the community gathered to inaugurate their brand new and vibrant community centre.

Women are now using it to start self-help livelihood projects.

Children who lacked proper school infrastructure...

...are now learning in a holistic environment within the village boundaries.

Partners like the US-based DML group joined the efforts and successfully fundraised for bringing water solutions to the village.

Support for the community continues to pour in with young volunteers from the USA joining the effort to bring safe water to villages in and around Losimingori.

In the fall of 2021, as a group of women, men and children gather together in the dry lands of Monduli, under the shade of a community centre to bring life to it, I cannot help but think of my first conversation with Mama Mary.

She taught me that tolerance and empathy lead the way for great solutions. And that even the smallest of contributions can make the largest impact stories of tomorrow.