Read the text about a traditional jumping dance.

East Africa is home to the Maasai, a tribe of people living mainly in Kenya and Tanzania. The Maasai have been around for hundreds of years, and they still practise many ancient traditions. If you visit a traditional Maasai village today, you can learn about many of their customs.

One of the oldest Maasai customs is the ten-day ceremony called Eunoto. The purpose of this ritual is to show that a group of boys are ready to become men. During one part of the Eunoto ceremony, some Maasai boys have a chance to perform the adumu, a traditional jumping dance. The dance is reserved for Maasai boys who are morani, or junior warriors in the tribe.

To prepare for the adumu, the boys dress in bright sheets of fabric. Red is the traditional colour, so some will even dye their hair bright red to match. Many boys wear beads that will jingle as they move and dance. Some boys carry sticks to represent the spears of warriors. Once the boys are dressed, they are ready to begin the dance.

The word adumu means ‘jump’ in the Maasai language, and that is exactly how the boys perform the dance. To begin, all the boys form a circle and take turns jumping in its centre. When it is his turn to perform, a dancer will stand straight and jump with his feet together. He tries to go as high as possible. As the boy jumps, the other participants sing. The tones they sing depend on the height of the jumps. The higher the jump, the higher the boys sing. The dance is repeated over and over until each of the morani has had his turn in the circle.