"Hello, I am SoEun Yoon, a senior in Hankuk Academy of Foreign Studies. I have been dreaming of carrying out educational business in Africa and constructing schools. Following the experience in Rwanda last year, I had a valuable time with the Masais in Kenya this summer. Though this writing might not be perfect, I hope you could simply enjoy reading it."

The night in Kenya was an absolute blackness. Throughout the stars sparsely spread throughout the sky as black as the skin of Kenya people, Helen, Shehks and I walked the long night road, hand in hand. We needed half an hour to reach Helen's house from where the bus left us, the volunteer teammates.

As I walked along with Helen I gradually got used to her salty and sour body smell - the one I smelled as Helen gleefully gave me a huge hug as me, a little, interesting-looking, yellow-faced Korean girl. Both unable to express our thoughts fully in English, we exchanged our names with all kinds of body languages :) And the hands of Helen and Shehks, all soaked in dirt, tightly grasped my hands - as if we were old mates who met again in a decade.

Helen and Shehks were two teenage friends of the Masai tribe. So friendly and warm-hearted, they made it unbelievable that Masais are the most brutal and violent among all Kenyans. Every time I stopped to pull out the thorns stuck in my shoes - I could not see the sharp thorny bushes that angrily stuck out from the land, due to the dim light oozing from the head lantern.

He even insisted that he should hold all the heavy baggages full of daily necessities that I brought for Helen's family. Sometimes, whenever I pointed at the dark bushes where the lions might have been living, Shehks chortlds and boasted that he had killed 24 lions with a spear. Wow, it was such a relief that I had a friend a Masai warrior friend :)


The night air of Africa that I revisited in a year swirled around in my breath, mellifluously mingled with the brightness streaming out from the stars and the moon. As we walked, having a friendly chat together, we, at last, managed to reach the fences of Helen's house. And, in the midst of the darkness in front of us, a brown contour of a huge brick-made housing slowly appeared. "Oh, am I not supposed to sleep with the Masais in a cowdung hut today? Wow, I really am lucky, chosen to sleep in a brick house!"

Utterly tired out, I desperately yearned for a sweet sleep with the Masais in a cosy bed. Yet, as my feet bewitchedly move towards the building, Shehks abruptly turned the direction to the left. Without leaving a second for asking why, he suddenly disappeared into the darkness and, BANG! Bumping into the top of the door, I saw yellow stars whirling about my head. When I opened my eyes, rubbing the forehead, I was almost 'crawling' into a cow-dung hut of 5m2.


I was almost choked to death as soon as I entered the house. The living room was far more small than the toilet at my house. Wall without wallpapers, dust-blowing earthen floor without carpet, two crude benches that seemed to have been made by an inept carpenter, and ancient brazier for fire were all I saw.

Around the warmth sat a mother and her six children in a huddle. 'Huh? Where is their father? Is he dead?' My curiosity soared up in my heart as I looked at an unfamiliar scene of a family devoid of father. But the answer was surprising enough to knock my hat off. 'My father dwells alone in the brickhouse over there.'

Yes, then I got to understand everything. So, their father could sleep there because of the Islamic influence of patriarchy. So, only mothers and children walked all they way to the bus to greet our visit. As I glanced at Mrs Ruth who was breastfeeding Isaiah at the corner, hot tears streamed out of my heart. A woman who gives birth to 16 children but hardly gets love as a wife.

Yet, not noticing my mind, she hands me a cup of warm Chai tea of her own making. Actually, I had been warned to not eat or drink the food of Masai people, since they simply take spoiled milk and rotten grain. But I found it impossible to reject. 'I guess drinking stale goat milk would not kill me, at least. Right?' So, though I even disliked creamy milk tea back in Korea, I had to soak my lips with the tea.


Unfortunately, as soon as I started trying some African food, Mrs Ruth handed me a plastic bowl full of boiled rice and bean that seemed to have been at least 4 days after cooking. Looking at them gladly sharing the food that they find really precious, I could not bear regretting my selfish habits I had in Korea.

After the meal, we had a small entertainment - warching at the Masai's traditional music video that all the family members of Helen's house made together. Wow, every single one of them was tremendously talented at music. Maybe I could engage them as special lecturers after I open a music school in Africa in the future :)

At that moment, Helen hung a fancy Masai traditional necklace with silver buckles sparkling around the whole edge. So, when we raise the shoulders up and down, the buckles make a clinking sound that becomes beautifully harmonious with exciting rhythms of their music.


After sharing the music together, I slowly brought out the straw I took from our camp. And it was for teaching the Masai about how to make straw shoes, the traditional Korean shoes that our ancestors had made. Like I noticed during the last summer's volunteer service trip to Rwanda, African kids rarely have shoes and clothes of their size. The clothings are simple pieces of fabric, and are teeming with big holes. Children, with their shoes extremely worn out, run on the fields in bare feet.

The members of my school's child rights club had watched a video clip about the parasitic insects that come out of the soil and pierce through the feet skin to reside in the children's body. So, we had visited a straw crafts center in Gangwha Island to actually make several straw shoes as gifts. As I began to skillfully weave the grasses, the kids' curious eyeballs sparkled with awe and excitement, and maybe brightened with joy that they would no more suffer from deadly thorny bushes on the ground.


Admist our delightful laughters and "nabo, are, uni!" (one, two, three!) shoutings for photos, Patrick, the eldest of the 6 children living in the hut - other ten sisters and brothers already got the job in cities -, stepped into the house along with cold night wind. Studying as a graduate student, Patrick was capable of fluently chatting with me in English.

As our deep talks and conversations continued throughout the midnight, Patrick once asked me, "What do you think of my house? Do poor people in Korea also live in such huts?" But I could not answer. How could I possibly reply that your cowdung hut is nothing but an insecure, iron-roofed refuge? My heart ached even more as I was introduced to the bedroom where I would sleep: a room smaller than 2m2. Crouching beside Helen, I tried hard to sleep on the uneven pile of wood, with three lambs licking my feet during the whole night.

Although I don't recall when I woke up and fell into sleep again, the morning finally greeted me with the cry of the brave rooster in the garden. Yet, it was hot smoke instead of the crystal clear morning air of Africa that greeted my new morning.

In the midst of the tears that quickly filled up my eyes and ran down my cheeks, I could see the blurred figure of Mrs Ruth, who was heating the room with fire. With my eyes rolling around and breath seriously blocked, I found it pitiful that the lack of education left the Masai unaware of the harmfulness of smoke from the fire. Unable to bear the atmosphere, I begged Helen to please bring me out for a short walk though it was freezing cold outside 


I asked to Helen who was so excited to show me the cattle she kept. "Helen, are you happy to live here?" Then, an answer without hesitation came. "Yeah, of course. I love the fence and mountains and clouds." The Masai people were living likewise. In the original form as the nature gave us, without greed but delight.

I felt the lovely feeling from the hands of Mrs Ruth who hung her handmade Masai necklace with memories of their lives gathered inside. The equal love of Masai people towards the trees, the flowers, the animals, or a yellow Asian girl. The love towards anyone.