One of the longest established camps in Maasai Mara, Sekenani was a victim of Kenya’s tourism slump and went out of business in 1998. With TTF support, the camp has now both reopened and reinvented itself, as a base of for community development and as a driving force to clean up and preserve the local environment by introducing recycling…

At Maasai Manyattas in the area surrounding the Sekenani gate of Maasai Mara Reserve, villagers gather together their non-biodegradable refuse and separate and grade it into green plastic bags ready for collection. This is a new concept in area where plastic, glass and metal litter have been traditionally dumped in the bush or thrown into open pits where it presents a danger to scavenging wildlife and pollutes the environment.

Pollution by human refuse, both from local communities and tourists, presents a very real threat to the precious ecosystem of the Maasai Mara, one of the world’s best-known wildlife preserves.
Plastic bags kill animals that eat them and choke waterways, human effluent and run off pollute streams and rivers and leaking camera batteries and other toxic waste poison the soil and destroy the grasslands that support this important conservation area.

The bags of sorted refuse are now collected by vehicles from Sekanani camp, who with TTF’s assistance are constructing a facility to sort, store and manage mass volumes of recyclable waste. Additionally the camp has invested heavily in energy conservation and waste-water management.

Recycling is not a new concept for the camp, which has managed to take a closed, bankrupt facility and reinvent it as a luxury tented camp that works with the local community to sustain tourism and development in the area. This transformation is indicative of the changing face of Kenyan tourism.

The camp was originally established in the mid-1970’s, in a valley just outside the Maasai Mara National Reserve. The site was developed as a tourist camp in the 80’s by Nick Wood and Jean Marie Sabin.

From the beginning, the Woods worked closely with the local community, and provided medical assistance to nearby clinics. Their initial contact with the Maasai community came through a young Maasai man, Dickson Letura, who worked at the camp.

The 1980’s were a boom period for Kenyan tourism with little regional competition and reliable contracts with suppliers of high volume, low yield clientele meaning a steady supply of business. However, a lack of any strategic marketing or planning at a National level made this an unsustainable situation.

As the tourist market changed during the 90’s, Kenya was perceived as a cheap, mass market destination, that could not compete with post apartheid South Africa and other regional competitors who had initiated strategic marketing plans. When a string of incidents of insecurity led to widespread negative publicity, Kenya’s tourism trade found itself in a gradual downward spiral.

For a small family run concern like Sekenani, keeping the camp running with decreasing client numbers was impossible- and like many other tourist businesses in this period it closed down.

TTF’s approach to the recovery of Kenya’s tourism trade had been to fund strategic marketing of the destinations and to support a diversified range of tourism ventures that would appeal to a broader market- effectively reinventing the destination.

Reinvention was also the plan for Nick and his father Christopher Woods, as they considered reopening the camp in 2004. They planned to open the camp with lease fees paid to 26 local Maasai landlords in order to provide financial benefit to the communities that they worked with.

But their plans to engage local people went much further than just a financial arrangement. They began to work with their former employee, Dickson, to engage the local communities in a series of local development projects based around the camp. They formed a partnership with a Kenyan NGO Action Africa Help- International (AAH-I).

Dickson helped to organize a series of local meetings, held at Sekenani to assess the needs and of local communities and identify potential development self help projects. As Dickson explains “This is not about handing out money, but about people helping themselves and their families. The tourism business at Sekenani has created a common interest for the people and using the camp for these meetings gave everyone a chance to get together and look at what we could achieve together”

The concept is remarkably simple. Within the communities, there an average of 400 households, each of which has a herd of goats. The head of each household was asked to donate a single goat from their herd, which were then all taken to market and sold for 1000 Kenya shillings each, thereby raising around 400,000 shillings for each communities individual projects.

Dickson now monitors the progress of these projects by traveling between the communities on a motorbike, over rough terrain, traversing rivers and dodging elephant herds. On his travels, he has seen some remarkable results.

The remote Leshuka Sub-location area is home to approximately 15,000 people. At a Sekenani based meeting, the lack of access to medical care in Leshuka was identified as an urgent community need. Currently, if a person becomes ill they must be carried for up to 3 hours in a blanket to meet a single public bus, which then travels 16 kilometres over very poor roads to reach the nearest health clinic. On average over 100 community members die each year because they are unable to access basic health care facilities or medication.

By using funds raised from goat sales, Leshuka now has a new clinic under construction, with the project being openly and transparently managed through a basic accounting system learned in the sessions held at Sekenani.

One of the Leshuka attendees at these meetings was Agnes Leshishi, who was one of only two women to attend these sessions. Yet her presence is a sign of the beginnings of change in patriarchal Maasai society, and the increasing role of women in community development. As Agnes says “Attending gives Maasai women a voice and I am grateful for the workshops as it has given our community a vision which it has never had before”.

For Sekenani to continue supporting these community initiatives and making its lease payments, the camp must be a viable and sustainable tourism business. With TTF assistance, the camp is being developed into an exclusive 30 bed camp complete with a new swimming pool and gym area, and wireless internet access throughout the camp for guests.TTF is also funding the construction of new kitchen facilities, drivers accommodation and self contained staff quarters that will allow the camp to employ local women for the first time. The recycling centre, a managed wetland for water treatment and a new organic garden will protect the environment and make the camp more sustainable.

New marketing initiatives are also being undertaken, and a key element of these is attracting guests with an interest in Maasai culture. To this end, a small information centre with artifacts and information boards on the local communities is being constructed at the camp. General Manager Nick Woods believes that many guests appreciate an introduction to authentic Maasai culture. “The key word is authentic” he says. Many of the cultural visits organized by camps and lodges in the Mara area are brief, organized at cost by tour drivers and often not much more than shopping trips for jewelry and handicrafts.

But Sekenani takes a different approach. As Nick explains “Because of our close relationship with the communities we can arrange informal visits to nearby manyattas. We have worked with the locals to make sure these visits are done in an informal way, with a guide to explain the traditional way of life and answer questions”.

Dickson adds “A lot of Sekenani guests have taken an interest in our community projects, and really appreciate visiting schools and clinics, and seeing the problems faced in this area. This has led to quite a lot of support and fundraising by tourists, and by Sekenani itself”.

The small Nkoilale Primary School, for example, has an ongoing relationship with Sekenani, and the camp has so far built two nursery classrooms and constructed a roof for the school. Past guests from Sekenani have fundraised for the school and donated books for the 400 students.

For many clients, visiting a school like Nkoilale or other community projects, lets them feel like they have experienced and learned from the Kenyan way of life, rather than just being a detached observer on safari. Authentic cultural experience is something an increasing number of visitors to Kenya are seeking, and properties such as Sekenani can provide this in a way that is genuine, accessible and of ultimate benefit to the local community. Through TTF, Kenya’s tourism is changing and offering a much wider range of experiences and to visitors. The reopening and reinvention of Sekenani shows this transition in action.