Feathered headbands

murran w birds 1030
Originally uploaded by crikenyasamburu.

I think I wrote about this in an earlier blog, but I didn't have a picture to share with you all. One of the teachers on a recent Earthwatch expedition to Samburu took this picture, so I'm borrowing it off of her flickr site. When a Samburu boy is circumsized, he has to go through a period of a month or two before he actually becomes a murran (warrior). During that time, he kills birds, stuffs them with grasses, and attaches them to a band that he wears around his head. The young men each try to kill as many birds as they can using a bow and blunt-tipped arrows. (My team saw some of the boys hunting one day, but none of them wore any birds yet.) Philip, our guide to all things Samburu, told us that the young men wear the birds to scare away girls (they can't have any girlfriends during this period of time), but they also try to kill a lot of birds in order to impress the girls for later. They keep adding birds until the headband is filled, and then they may give some of them away. The Samburu, however, do not typically kill birds and they never eat them, according to what we were told.