My name is Rafael ole Moono. I am local Metafari facilitator

I am Rafael ole Moono from the Handeni district, Tanga region in eastern Tanzania.

I work as a coordinator of a community based organisation called Imusot e Purka meaning ‘awareness to all’ in maasai native language. I belong to the illandiis age group.

Imusot e Purka was formulated in 1997 as an awareness, advocacy and mediating platform between three conflicting parties in the once wider Handeni district, now divided into two districts; Kilindi and Handeni.

1. Pastoralists who have been ‘far’ from the government authorities but should know about the government and its laws and policies


2. Cultivators who are always in conflict when the pastoralists graze animals in their cultivated farms


3. Last but not least government leaders who seem distant from the pastoralist community when implementing unfavourable national policies.

My work is to link these parties to set up a table of discussion for something to happen without prejudice or conflict.

This is my basic work even but in the Metafari I participate as a local guide and facilitator. I met Leif for the first time in November 2007 at the Korogwe White Parrot hotel through my friend and a long time collaborator Ruth Nesje

We met again in March 2008 at the Tanga International Conference Centre to learn more about Metafari and to explore if I could be partnering up with Leif

UNVEILING THE CURTAIN OF THE STAGE OF NATURE

The Metafari that we just completed in October 2008 was my first as a local guide. The experience of Metafari was like a new pair of glasses and binoculars to see the world and nature in which I have been living and admiring all my life. But the Metafari has tought me to realise some essential ways to make wider and critical analysis of how it can unveil to us milliards of lessons.

To me it made some views wider, closer and sometimes more detailed. At the waterhole we experienced hearty sounds that could make impact to the unintended human target with the result of running away from a roaring lion that was close by us.
The natural succession of users at the waterhole was as if there was rights to specific time and space for each species of the neighbouring dwellers. Just as if there were written laws to be observed.

I witnessed warthogs alias the “Pumba” acting as destroyers of the public water hole. Serious elephants threw them out of the pond; Rolling, wadding, mud bathing and making a mess of the precious lifegiving water hole.

There were some buffalo boys without manners and respect, just deciding to stay in the pond to cool off the heat of the day. As no one can push them around they seem to just claim the rights to misbehave.

I witnessed the night transform into day through dawn and the morning light, morning breeze and finally the sunrise, where the creation is refreshing itself with anticipation for the day to come.

Perhaps this is why the Maasai women though the milk ritual simply beseech the almighty power to make the coming hours comforting and rewarding a new day of their lifetime. Perhaps they recognise the new reminder by the new arrival of the continuous life since creation itself. This is reminder we all should notice to give it a meaning that will simply add value to the fast pace of present life.

Pages and pages could be written about close microscopic discoveries, wide periscope scanning and even magnified binoculars views from this life transforming odyssey called Metafari.

Perhaps even a Maasai like me who lives in this environment where nothing has changed can make discoveries in the process. So perhaps Metafari is not about Maasai as mentioned in the Kates’ Metasaga pages but that the Maasai are just a part of the small observations on life giving inspirations themes like the rituals and wider meaning of the break of morning and other what nature offers.

We Maasai embrace nature as it offers to celebrate the completeness of the creation and for this reason it matters that we are related to Metafari which derives wider meaning about natural foundation.

Metafari is for everyone. Even a local guide and an expert in this wild can be a discoverer.

If all this is so to me the local, what about anyone else and what about you????