ABSTRACT
Maasai enthusiasm over their traditions is tempered by a marked reticence concerning forces that lie beyond their grasp; and they avoid the topic of death above all. No one can know what happens after death, but the clear presumption is – nothing.There is no belief in afterlife or any realm of ancestral spirits.At most, there is the hope of perpetuating the family.Through children, parents leave behind an imprint that survives their own mortality and the wake of fading memories. Old people with their family around them can die a good death only in the sense that it is inevitable and that a bad death has been avoided. Men and women die, age-sets grow old and are forgotten, but there is continuity through the chain of succession, and the age system has a certain affinity with the family in this respect.
