Kenya cultural tour, family ties

Planet

The vehicles used to transport people from their hotels to the Maasai village and Kenyan families are hybrid vehicles (electric and petrol) is a shared vehicle (as there is no public transport to the venue). The vehicles used are Vellfires and 2024 models. From the point of disembarkation for the first day with the Maasai, our guests walk to the village. For the days of the trip and the activities involved, our guests walk to various points in the valley for these activities. For the second day with the Grandmas, our guests spend the day in the grandmas homes.

In catering for the food, our guests get involved with both communities in preparing a vegetarian meal and the vegetables are sourced from local Maasai and Kikuyu gardens. The food is cooked on a biogas system which is powered by the dung Maasai cattle herds. Bio gas has also been installed at the grandmas homes This means that neither the Maasai or Kikuyu grandmas do not have to forage or destroy local habitats for firewood. The biogas system produces a high quality and non-toxic fertiliser which is used on the Maasai's and Kikuyu grandma’s farms. All the food we provide on the day comes from the local farms either owned by the Maasai or the Kikuyu grandmas.

People

We employ up to 10 Maasai staff and 16 grandmas who act as hosts, guides and skill instructors. The entire trip is managed by local staff. We also support the local Maasai in jewellery making and their small businesses where they sell their jewellery. We do this by providing seed funding for their small businesses and supplies and also enabling them to sell their jewellery to the guests which we send to them. As a not for profit, this is funded by the tour fees charged to clients. In relation to the grandmas, they make trinkets for sale to our guests. For the grandmas their pig farms funding has been provided by the fees that guests pay to attend. This is part of our work – and the retraining of grandmas and support for their piggeries means they have a commercial operation within 14 months.

100% of the people we employ are local Maasai or Kikuyu Kenyan people. Those employed include young men, single and married women and grandmothers. The latter two groups are particularly marginalized in their societies. Our wages are paid according to the Department of Labour in Kenya. The diversity strategy is to employ a cross section of persons with an emphasis on women and senior citizens. This trip is also available for people with limited mobility and vision or hearing impaired. We have Maasai who have been trained as guides for the hearing impaired and use sign language to communicate. As well as this and for hearing impaired people visiting our Kikuyu grandmas, we employ the services of the Maasai (as above). The villages all have toilets equipped for wheel chairs and the villages have walkways that cater for wheel chairs. Our program within the Maasai villages host many local schools in the area and these days are provided free of charge for those local schools. These schools are particularly local schools for disadvantaged children.