San Jose man's gifts to Masai village school add fuel to debate on Kenyan tribe's future

By Julie Patel
Mercury News - April 26, 2006

For centuries, the Masai people of Kenya have lived in huts without power or running water, used plants and minerals to heal themselves, and survived on a diet of cow milk, meat and blood.

So when Patrick O'Sullivan, a visitor from Silicon Valley, entered one of their villages and left behind a school equipped with solar power, laptops and a projector, he sparked an old debate about the tribe's desire to preserve its culture while surviving in a modern world encroaching on its way of life.

Most Masai parents and teachers were delighted with the new tools for their children. The school's enrollment doubled from roughly 200 to 410, partly because children tending cattle during the day were able to attend classes at night, thanks to solar-powered lights.

O'Sullivan hired a film crew to document the work and plans to use the video to pitch the project to other individuals and companies that may want to sponsor a school.

O'Sullivan, 62, lives in San Jose and first visited Kenya in December 2004. He followed African politics and history voraciously from the time he was in high school in Ireland. In the 1960s, he attended anti-apartheid protests for South Africa and followed the movement in Kenya to gain independence from Britain.

After visiting South Africa, O'Sullivan -- who was approaching retirement -- took a safari that led him to Oloolaimutia village. There he saw the Masai people literally tying bricks together to build two more classrooms for their school. The spirit of the Masai and their will to survive stuck with him. He went to Kenya seeking adventure and a taste of culture. He left feeling compassion for their plight.

O'Sullivan -- who had worked at Apple Computer and several start-ups -- changed his plans to travel more after retirement and instead had a mission: to expand the crowded five-room schoolhouse.

Dickson Mutaiti, his driver and tour guide in Kenya, agreed to help make the arrangements. O'Sullivan asked Mutaiti if he should also send the children a slice of Silicon Valley: laptop computers and a projector.

No amenities

Mutaiti pointed out an obvious problem: There was no electricity in the school, the village or for many miles around. So O'Sullivan consulted with engineers and solar power experts in the Bay Area. He struck a deal by fax with a U.S.-based solar power company in Kenya to install four 120-watt panels on the school's roof.

Earlier this year, O'Sullivan, his film crew and several friends went to Kenya to check out the school and saw early signs of success. A locked box had been installed over the school's light switch to keep intrigued students from turning it on an off at every opportunity, O'Sullivan said.

Bellarmine student Sean Riordan, 14, of Cupertino, who took the trip with his father, one of O'Sullivan's friends, described images of the tribe's poverty: Schoolchildren each getting a scoopful of bland maize everyday for lunch and a little boy drinking from a cup that appeared black because it was covered with flies. But he also remembered the excitement around the new school.

``It was amazing to see something we take for granted -- like seeing a digital picture on the computer,'' said Riordan, who helped train the teachers to use the computers. ``They thought it was fascinating.''

But with the light came questions for the entire village. Elders -- who had spent much of their lives resisting assimilation into the modern world, fighting British colonizers, and lobbying the Kenyan government for the tribe's right to self-sufficiency -- felt their work was being lost in the tide of support from parents and teachers for O'Sullivan's school.

`Mostly elder people don't absolutely want the change. They want people to be as they were before,'' David Ole Koshal, leader of Oloolaimutia village, said on O'Sullivan's video footage.

The debate about change is happening in tribes around the world -- including the Maori in New Zealand, Native Americans on U.S. reservations and the Hmong in Laos and Merced County. As tribes on the fringe of society face droughts and famine or governments that encroach on their land, most are moving to accept some changes, said Kukuta Ole Maimai, a Masai who founded the Maasai Association based in Kenya and Bellevue, Wash. But they fear education will make more Masai leave their villages and adopt a world view that looks down on the tribe's way of life, he said.

The Masai population was slashed in half by smallpox in the early 1900s. The tribe survived traditionally by trading cattle and using it for food, shelter and clothing, but much of the ranch land was taken over for game reserves, parks and development.

A drought in parts of Kenya is wiping out Masai cattle, so the Kenyan government recently passed a law allowing Masai to temporarily let cattle feed on reserves. Without the Masai who left their villages to become doctors, lawyers and policy-makers, legislation like this would not have been possible, Maimai said.

A philosophical debate

Beyond the basics of survival, experts say, is a philosophical debate about what makes people happy. Is ignorance bliss; is it better not to be exposed to the materialism, commercialism and competition of the modern world? Would people be happier living the simple life, close to nature and in tribal units that encourage collaborative living?

Or are members of the tribe like the prisoners from Plato's cave: Before seeing the light, they could not imagine a bigger, more nuanced world? Isn't knowledge, for its own sake, valuable and a basic right of all humans -- nomadic or not? Perhaps when they are educated, they leave for a reason: because they are happier.

Owning the changes

Lea B. Pellett, an emeritus professor of anthropology at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Va., said the more information and knowledge the better, but that the Masai will have to take ownership of the change and preserve what is most important to them from their culture.

``It's really a difficult set of issues they'll struggle with for a long time until they finally get a system that is going to provide them with a sustainable society,'' said Pellett, who ran an ethnographic field school in Southwest Kenya.

O'Sullivan clearly lands on the side of knowledge leading to happiness. Near the end of his last trip, he noticed a small bed in the corner of the classroom where solar-charged batteries were stored. O'Sullivan was told a village elder slept there at night with a bow, arrow and spear to protect the batteries. Cows had previously been the only objects so prized by the Masai that people slept next to them to protect them -- from hyenas and lions.

``There is nobody out there who would want to steal it, but that is the value they put on it,'' O'Sullivan said. ``To me, it was funny and serious, and I was impressed.''

Contact Julie Patel at jpatel@mercurynews.com or (408) 271-3679.