After their circumcision and graduation from childhood, Maasai boys become men and enter the next stage of their life, Moranhood, or warriorhood. Warriors are initiated over an almost 7 year period and remain warriors from their mid-teens to early thirties. Junior warriors, called ilkeliani, are instructed by senior warriors in cattle raiding, war tactics and hunting strategies. During this time the junior warriors live with their families, but after a few years, once they reach maturity, they move out and live with other warriors in a manyatta, a kraal specially built for warriors, their girlfriends, and the fire stick elders, who will continue the instruction of the warriors. Manyattas are always located near water and good grazing fields and include 49 (a lucky number for the Maasai) houses. Each of the 49 houses is built by the mothers of the warriors and contains a bed for the warrior's girlfriend and her mother and a bed for himself.
" To become a warrior is the dream of every Maasai [boy]; the word itself seems to convey magical powers. A warrior [should] be strong, clever, courageous, confident, wise, and gentle. He must hunt lions for his headdress, protect his herds from predators, retrieve stolen or strayed cattle, often from long distances, and safeguard his community. Warriors enjoy great comradeship, sharing with one another everything… In addition to the practical services they provide for the group they live among, warriors also add an immeasurable sense of excitement, adventure, and romance; without their songs, their poetry, their flirting, their bold masculinity, Maasai life would not be the same."
-Tepilit Ole Saitoti
As warriors grow older they may seek a more secluded life and often go to Olpuls, special feasting camps built only for warriors that are located deep in nature. Here the warriors continue their education and formally pray to Engai. After many years of protecting cattle from rhinos, hunting lions, flirting with girls, growing and styling their long hair with the red clay ochre, and mastering the arts of warriorhood, the pressure from the younger generation of warriors is finally too great and the older generation must prepare them to become the elders, a process known as Eunoto.
Eunoto takes place at an especially large manyatta built for the warrior ceremony. The mature warriors arrive in full ceremonial gear and carry white poles instead of spears. The spear is the warrior’s most valuable possession. They are often decorated to symbolize peace and are never stuck into the ground by the point. Carrying the white poles indicates that the mature warriors are ready for elderhood.
Together, the mature warriors and the elders select an alaunoni to represent his generation as they move into adulthood. The alaunoni must be very respected and honorable and have an unblemished past. He must be in good health, have a large herd of cattle, be of pure Maasai origin, must never have killed anyone, can not be associated with any curse, and his parents must still be alive and they must be respected as well. The selection of the alaunoni must also be approved by the laibon, the most feared and respected spiritual elder of the Maasai. Warriors are sad to leave behind their youth and grow old. So even though it is an honor to be chosen, the alaunoni must be selected without his knowledge. It is an honor that all warriors would wish to avoid. Upon his surprise selection, the alaunoni is given insuritia, coiled brass ornaments that will be hung around his neck, as well as a sheepskin. Two other warriors, the olabaroenkeene, whose ox will be sacrificed, and the olaigwanani, who was selected years earlier during the circumcision ceremony, will help the alaunoni watch over the Eunoto activities for the next four days of the ceremony.
The Maasai typically live in dung houses with flat roofs. For the Eunoto ceremony, however, a ceremonial house is built with a conical roof. This is called the o-singira. All the food for the ceremony, including the meat and milk that will be eaten by everyone and the honey beer that will be drunk just by the elders, will be kept here. After the o-singira is built, the mature warriors go down to the river with the elders to have their faces covered with white chalk paint in a process called enturoto; they return to the manyatta singing in a procession, now almost elders themselves.
The most sentimental part of the Eunoto ceremony occurs next. The mature warriors have their hair shaved off by their mothers. For about twenty years the warriors have let their hair grow, styling it with their fellow warriors, and dyeing it with ocher. As it is shaved off, symbolizing the end of their warriorhood, many warriors become physically upset, shaking and crying. Their youth is now behind them. Their warrior comradeship is now a thing of the past.
Finally, the warriors are ready to become elders, to marry and raise a family. To represent this, a woman from a respected family is selected to marry the alaunoni. Maasai girls are often betrothed in their infancy, as the parents of both the boy and the girl are eager for their children to have someone with which to raise a family. The boy's parents will present gifts to the parents of a new born girl and will continue to bring her family gifts until she is of age for marriage. However, no betrothal is ever definite. If the woman is chosen to marry the alaunoni, all previous wedding arrangements are cancelled. This is done for the good of Maasai society.
The mature warriors are now elders. They can marry. The specially built manyatta is abandoned and at sunset the new elders go home to face the responsibilities of elderhood: getting married and raising a family
