ABSTRACT
Once the new age-group of moran have the privileges, they are in a mood to show their mettle. Their manyata recruitment posses are mounted in the spirit of a challenge against the world at large and against their fathers in particular. Ultimately, there has to be a limit to their freedom, and it is the firestick patrons who must be prepared to curb them, not as fathers but as patrons showing their mettle. In Case 22, the recruitment raid into Loodokilani was widely regarded as the reckless gamble of an age-group of untamed moran. Yet significantly, it was the patrons who averted a major affray. These elders were of Terito age-set and they could not have forgotten that as moran they too had had a major brush with their own firestick patrons in many parts of the Maasai area. It was the age system that was as much to blame as the moran themselves.
