This paper details the social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on Maasai pastoralists in northern Tanzania. It is based on a year of ethnographic fieldwork in northern Tanznaia (2019-2020) that overlapped the first COVID-19 wave (March-July 2020). The paper draws in particular from participant observation of everyday life at the local level, contextualized in relation to the political economy of government response. Following a brief closure of public services, everyday life in Tanzania’s Maasailand continued without major policy intervention throughout the first wave of the pandemic. Regional sociopolitical dynamics were complicated by imminent national elections, a denialist president, diverse cultural belief systems at the local level, and a total falloff of conservation tourism revenue from the northern safari circuit. Pastoralist perspectives on the emergent pandemic ranged from fear and apprehension to indifference. The livestock economy, which continued to function in relation to pre-existing political and environmental constraints, remained of utmost importance to Maasai pastoralists. The pastoral livelihood system proved particularly well-adapted to coping with the pandemic-induced global economic crash as pastoralists continued to control their means of production. Further to the observable effects of COVID-19 on Maasai society, the reflexive dimensions of ‘doing ethnography’ during the pandemic were also of great anthropological significance. When the pandemic began, anthropologists around the world were commonly unable to travel to the field. Few were in the position to remain emplaced at their study sites as international travel restrictions became entrenched. Being in the field during the pandemic generated new ethical questions that complicate the anthropological project. These uncharted moral terrains blurred the lines between “home” and “field”; “life” and “research”; and “anthropologist” and “subject.” The pandemic thus created an opening for thinking both about the lives of pastoralists, and the people who study them.
