Maasai youths in Kenya have come together for a sports competition, created as an alternative to the group’s annual lion hunt – a traditional rite of passage.
Hundreds competed in various games in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro, including spear throwing, athletics and high jump.
For generations, Maasai warriors were expected to fight and kill a lion as part of a ritual centred around their transition to manhood.
But after the number of large cats began plummeting in Africa, environmentalists and the group’s elders founded the so-called Maasai Olympics.
Around 160 morans, or warriors, participated in the competition, including 40 women, some of whom wore colorful sporting beads.
The Maasai leaders and the Big Life Foundation developed the games to replace the community’s “Olamayio” ceremony, which required boys to engage in combat with and kill a lion in order to demonstrate their bravery and masculinity. The games made their debut in 2012.
The action was taken in reaction to a sharp reduction in the number of lions in Kenya, which has fallen from an estimated 30,000 in the late 1970s to just over 2,000 today. Conflict with humans, according to the Kenya Wildlife Service, is the main threat to lions and other animals.
