Maasai Days

Anthropologists have studied, and famous writers (Dinesen, Hemingway, Waugh) have been inspired by, the handsome, lion-hunting Maasai, who regard cows as currency and move with them across the borders of Kenya and Tanzania wherever there is rain and pasture. In this warmhearted portrait of a proud, tenacious people--one of the most compassionate books ever written about Africans--an American journalist describes her six-year-long friendship with a group of Maasai villagers, whose problems in adapting to or resisting new ways of life (the effects on the Maasai of alcohol, politics and modern education) she came to understand and respect. Of the three schoolboys she knew best, one went on to irrigation engineering, another became a smooth-talking salesman, and the third returned to his people. For Bentsen, the Maasai are survivors whose next generation may successfully make the leap to the ``new life.'' Photos not seen by PW. (Sept.)