Mindy Budgor is an American businesswoman and the author of Warrior Princess: My Quest to Become the First Female Maasai Warrior.
Mindy Budgor is an American businesswoman and the author of Warrior Princess: My Quest to Become the First Female Maasai Warrior.
Budgor is a 2012 graduate of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. She started her first company while an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin. At age 27, before starting her Chicago course, she spent three months on charity work at the Masai Mara National Reserve, Kenya. [1] [2] While there, she claims to have become the first female Maasai warrior, which women had traditionally not been allowed to do. [3] Budgor published a memoir titled Warrior Princess: My Quest to Become the First Female Maasai Warrior (2013). [4]
Budgor has received criticism [5] for her claim to have become the first female Maasai warrior. The critics write that her book simplifies the Maasai culture and trivializes the process of becoming a Maasai warrior. [6] [1] Becoming a Maasai warrior is a process that takes an average of 15 years, but Budgor writes that she completed the process in three months. [7]
Maasai Mara, also sometimes spelled Masai Mara and locally known simply as The Mara, is a large national game reserve in Narok, Kenya, contiguous with the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. It is named in honor of the Maasai people, the ancestral inhabitants of the area, who migrated to the area from the Nile Basin. Their description of the area when looked at from afar: "Mara" means "spotted" in the local Maasai language, due to the many short bushy trees which dot the landscape.
The Maasai are a Nilotic ethnic group inhabiting northern, central and southern Kenya and northern Tanzania. They are among the best-known local populations internationally due to their residence near the many game parks of the African Great Lakes and their distinctive customs and dress. The Maasai speak the Maa language, a member of the Nilotic language family that is related to the Dinka, Kalenjin and Nuer languages. Except for some elders living in rural areas, most Maasai people speak the official languages of Kenya and Tanzania, Swahili and English. The Maasai population has been reported as numbering 1,189,522 in Kenya in the 2019 census, compared to 377,089 in the 1989 census, though many Maasai view the census as government meddling and therefore either refuse to participate or actively provide false information. Many Maasai tribes throughout Tanzania and Kenya welcome visitors to their villages to experience their culture, traditions, and lifestyle, in return for a fee.
Xena is a fictional character from Robert Tapert's Xena: Warrior Princess franchise. Co-created by Tapert and John Schulian, she first appeared in the 1995–1999 television series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, before going on to appear in Xena: Warrior Princess TV show and subsequent comic book of the same name. The Warrior Princess has also appeared in the spin-off animated film The Battle for Mount Olympus, as well as numerous non-canon expanded universe material, such as books and video games. Xena was played by New Zealand actress Lucy Lawless.
Xena: Warrior Princess is an American fantasy television series filmed on location in New Zealand. The series aired in first-run syndication from September 4, 1995, to June 18, 2001. Critics have praised the series for its strong female protagonist, and it has acquired a strong cult following, attention in fandom, parody, and academia, and has influenced the direction of other television series.
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The Masai giraffe, also spelled Maasai giraffe, and sometimes called the Kilimanjaro giraffe, is a species or subspecies of giraffe. It is native to East Africa. The Masai giraffe can be found in central and southern Kenya and in Tanzania. It has distinctive, irregular, jagged, star-like blotches that extend from the hooves to its head. The Masai giraffe is currently the national animal of Tanzania.
Malinda Gayle McCready was an American country music singer. Active from 1995 until her death in 2013, she recorded a total of five studio albums. Her debut album, 1996's Ten Thousand Angels, was released on BNA Records and was certified 2× Platinum by the RIAA, while 1997's If I Don't Stay the Night was certified Gold. 1999's I'm Not So Tough, her final album for BNA, was less successful, and she left the label. A self-titled fourth album followed in 2002 on Capitol Records. McCready's fifth and final studio album, I'm Still Here, was released in March 2010 on Iconic Records.
Arusha Region is one of Tanzania's 31 administrative regions and is located in the north of the country. The region's capital and largest city is the city of Arusha. The region is bordered by Kajiado County and Narok County in Kenya to the north, the Kilimanjaro Region to the east, the Manyara and Singida Regions to the south, and the Mara and Simiyu regions to the west. Arusha Region is home to Ngorongoro Conservation Area, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The region is comparable in size to the combined land and water areas of the state of Maryland in the United States.
Narok is a town west of Nairobi that supports Kenya's economy in south-west of the country, along the Great Rift Valley. Narok is the district capital of the Narok County and stands as the major centre of commerce in the district. Narok has a population of around 40,000 people, mostly Maasai. The elevation of Narok is 1827 metres in altitude.
Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper is a 2004 computer-animated musical fantasy film. It was released to video on September 28, 2004, and made its television premiere on Nickelodeon on November 14, 2004.
The White Masai is a 2005 film directed by Hermine Huntgeburth and starring Nina Hoss and Jacky Ido. The screenplay concerns Carola, a woman who falls in love in Kenya with Maasai Lemalian. The film is based on an autobiographical novel of the same name by the German born writer Corinne Hofmann. In the film version, names have been changed from those in the novel.
Corinne Hofmann is a German born author living in Switzerland, most famous for her multi-million selling memoir Die weisse Massai.
Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses is a 2006 computer-animated dance film. It first premiered on Nickelodeon on September 10, 2006, and it was later released to DVD on September 19.
Vera Mindy Chokalingam, known professionally as Mindy Kaling, is an American actress, comedian, screenwriter and producer. She first gained recognition starring as Kelly Kapoor in the NBC sitcom The Office (2005–2013), for which she also served as a writer, executive producer, and director. For her work on the series, she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series.
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Carol Beckwith is an American photographer, author, and artist known for her photojournalism documenting the indigenous tribal cultures of Africa, most notably in partnership with the Australian photographer Angela Fisher. Between them, Beckwith and Fisher have published 14 books, and have had their photos appear in National Geographic, Natural History, African Arts, The Observer Magazine, Time, Life, Vogue, Marie Claire and Elle.
Hyrule Warriors is a hack and slash video game developed by Omega Force and Team Ninja for the Wii U video game console. The game is a collaboration between Koei Tecmo and Nintendo, mixing settings and characters from Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda with the gameplay of Koei's Dynasty Warriors series. Hyrule Warriors was released in Japan in August 2014, and worldwide the following month. It became one of the best-selling games on the Wii U. An updated port, Hyrule Warriors Legends, was released for the Nintendo 3DS in Japan in January 2016 and worldwide in March of the same year. A second enhanced port, Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition, was released for the Nintendo Switch in 2018. A successor, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, was released exclusively for the Nintendo Switch in November 2020.
The White Masai is an autobiographical novel written by Corinne Hofmann about the years she spent in Kenya. It was published in German in 1998 and translated into English in 2005. A film adaptation was released in 2005.
To the east and north of the Maasai Mara National Reserve, some of the former Maasai cattle-grazing areas have been converted into wildlife conservancies for tourism.
