When a bribe threatened to tear the Maasai apart

Bribery or the exchange of cash or its equivalent to receive a service is as old as mankind.

Locally, bribes have been used to circumvent justice or deny life-saving services to the deserving citizenry. However, as one Joseph Thomson realised, bribes were an essential means of gaining passage through hitherto hostile Maasai territory.

Thomson was the son of Scottish stonemason, who, at only 25, dared to run where others feared to...