At the entry to Amboseli, one of Kenya’s smallest and busiest game parks, we were sucked into the tourist trap of going to see a Maasai village. The entire idea of watching a once-great tribe of people prostituting themselves in front of Muzungus for cash seemed unbearable. It is reminiscent of so many Native Americans who have been forced off their land, into the depths of alcoholism, or into the casino business. Of the options, running a casino to earn enough money to support an entire reservation is the lesser of the evils. When the rest of Kenya’s tribes made the shift toward “development,” the Maasai peoples were given the option of leaving their roots behind to join the pursuit of wealth in the cities, or maintaining their nomadic lifestyle and turning to tourism to earn enough money to buy textbooks for their primary school. Because the basis of their culture is subsistence—just enough livestock for milk and blood to feed the village, just enough water to keep themselves and their cows hydrated in the devastatingly dry savannah, and just enough shelter to protect themselves and their animals from the wild—the Maasai never had a need for money until the government commodified education, forcing them to sell themselves to tourists for $14 a pop. Fortunately, $14 bought us an educational tour of their village rather than a ritualistic bleeding or anything equally degrading. Their way of life is truly incredible. Despite the fact that most Maasai are at least six feet tall, their houses stand no higher than 4 feet and are made entirely out of tree branches and cow dung. When they slaughter a cow, they stretch the rawhide over a wooden frame to make a bed, eat the meat, and use the bones to handcraft their ceremonial jewelry. When the area gets dry and barren, they simply leave their circular village behind and construct a new one where their cows have a better chance of survival. It’s no wonder the West has such a fascination with these people. They represent everything we’ve abandoned—using (or rather, having) only what you need in order to survive.