Where people live in harmony with lions
For as long as he could remember, Meiteranga Kamunu Saitoti dreamed of killing lions.
When he was a young boy growing up in the Maasai heartland of southern Kenya, lions were everywhere. Amboseli National Park, famous for its elephants, lions and views of Mount Kilimanjaro, was not far away to the south. Lions and other animals moved freely between the unfenced park and the Maasai communal lands where Saitoti lived.
The Maasai communal lands, also called group ranches, are geographically close, yet a world away from the national park. Inside Amboseli, elephants wallow in deep-green swamps and big cats and hyenas stalk wildebeest and buffalo. In the lands that lie beyond, furtive lions play hide-and-seek with Maasai herders and their livestock on hardscrabble plains that turn to dust in times of drought and to muddy quagmires after rains.
This is still the case in much of rural Africa. Lions and other predators live alongside people, not behind fences, and life is hard-won for both.
The Maasai and lions have shared this land for centuries. The Maasai see themselves as they see lions – as noble, superior and formidable. More than that, lions have always been the ultimate measure of a Maasai warrior's courage. In a rite of passage known in the Maa language as olamaiyo, when a young man reached the age of maturity, he proved his readiness to become a warrior by killing a lion.
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20210913-where-people-live-in-harmony-with-lions
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Yes, the Maasai still eat meat. But they no longer kill lions, and that's why this belongs here.