Maasai Mara safari camp in Kenya

Planet

The tourism venture (and land) is wholly owned and operated by the local Maasai community through SEMADEP - Sekanani Maasai Development Project - as a project that raises money to educate poor children and build a rescue centre for girls running away from Female Genital Mutilation. A committee has been set up to run the camp. All profits are used for community development in the Sekanani area. All staff are from the local Maasai community including the Camp Manager. All receive training from local and national development organisations e.g. SNV and ACC. The community provides school fees for orphans. We are also building shallow wells in the community. We are raising the funds to equip the local, rural health clinic.

Travellers support us by staying with us in our camp rather than one of the mainstream tourist camps, by engaging in our volunteer programme, and by going on safari walks, and cattle herding, with us local Maasai. This holiday is part of the responsibletravel.com and Conservation International Community Based Tourism Programme to support and promote community based tourism ventures that offer significant conservation and development benefits to local communities.

People

Dressed in bright red robes, spear in hand, Maasai warriors are an impressive sight to behold. Calm and courageous in dangerous situations, this tribe is renowned for its remarkable trackers with generations of knowledge of their lands and its wildlife. As semi-nomadic pastoralists, they still live by herding cattle and goats. Where other Kenyan tribes have adjusted to modern-day living and sacrificed their lands and their livelihood, the Maasai still stay true to their traditions.