The Maasai’s struggle for land rights and dignity

By Soleil-Chandni MousseauIn the early morning of August 18, the safari cars that usually creep along the Ngorongoro-Serengeti highway, slowed by their sheer numbers, encountered a different challenge. Thousands of Maasai men and women, draped in red-patterned Shuka cloth and waving grass, a symbol of peace, were blocking the highway.They were staging a peaceful protest against the Tanzanian government’s latest ruthless attempt to forcibly evict them from their ancestral lands. The police, wary of using violence in front of international tourists as they had in neighbouring Loliondo in…