By Michelle Broder Van Dyke
Maasai Warrior Sabore Ole Oiye, aka “Baby Giraffe” at Grace Cathedral on Sept. 27, with little giraffes
To see from other people’s perspectives, and to genuinely remember (or realize) that not everyone’s lives is yours, is a gift; or so says the late David Foster Wallace in a commencement speech I read the other day on the Guardian’s Promosexual blog, recited originally in 2005. Wallace stated that we should strive to see from other people’s perspectives, remember that we are not the center of the universe and that, in fact, other people have bad days, too. So, don’t feel so sorry for yourself. Or at least something to that effect is proclaimed by Wallace, but at greater length, with more subtlety and much more eloquence. As Wallace puts it: “I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket’s checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do.”
Sometimes, though, you are adjacent to a world that is so different from the one that you’re familiar with that you don’t have to choose to remember that you are not the center of the universe, because the truth of the matter is staring you in the face. Instead, the importance becomes less remembering that you are not the center, but having to come to terms with and decide what you are going to do with this knowledge. Wallace offers an option, which seems still fitting for my own experience: “The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.”
Maasai Warrior Sabore Ole Oiye, nicknamed “baby giraffe,” towered above me at the Maasai Warrior Training at the Grace Cathedral a couple Saturdays ago, stating calmly, without even a slight smile in his eye, that he has killed two lions in his lifetime. Lifting his two-sided spear, Sabore explained that the blunt side is for throwing; the lion will first need to be declared TKO. The other side is razor-sharp, and ready to spear the lion. The Maasai warriors wear the mane of the lion home, and slide the tail over the sharp-end of the spear as they heroically return to their village.
New Maasai warriors are trained for six to eight years in “the bush,” the all-encompassing term that refers to the wild wilderness of Kenya, which surrounds their village. The warriors learn how to slay lions, which in a polygamous patriarchal society that measures worth in manes and cattle, is extremely important. A woman in the audience asked: “What reasons make you kill lions?” To which Sabore explained, “The main reason is to show that you are brave. And then your friends will say, ‘come and marry my sister.’” They also learn, based on the ancient ways of the nomadic Maasai, basic survival skills – how to protect themselves from wild animals and how to live off of the land.