Traditional Masai live in a patriarchal society.  Young women are literally sold into marriage for a bride price in livestock, usually to much older men who have other wives.  These young mothers were in their teens.  Women make their own jewelry, build the stick-mud-dung huts within the palisade walls of the village, and care for the children and young livestock.  Men control the real wealth, the livestock.    Although the central government is trying to get the Masai to give up their nomadic, cattle herding lifestyle, there were still several traditional villages on the Mara plains in 1993.  Young boys watch the herds as they graze.  If lions threaten the livestock, the men confront them with traditional spears and wooden throwing sticks.  The previous season one man had been killed by a lion.  Red predominates the clothing that the Masai wear.  Our guide said that if a lion on a kill sees a Masai come over a hill a mile away, it will abandon its meal.  Obviously, the "king of beasts" is not color-blind!