A Maasai Perspective on the Mara

Interviewee

Jackson Saigilu Ole Looseyia

Tangulia Mara Camp,Owner; BBC TV Host; and former Rekero Camp, Guide and Co- Manager

Interviewers

Alison M. Jones

NWNL Director and Photographer

Alison M Fast

Videographer

Rekero Camp, Maasai Mara National Reserve, Kenya, on September 29, 2009

Introductory Note

Jackson was the first Maasai guide in the Mara, and at time of this posting in 2024 is sole owner of Tangulia Mara Camp, a Maasai Mara tourist lodge. In full disclosure, Jackson and I together summited Kilimanjaro, the home of his Maasai god, in 2003. We shared our very different heritages, our philosophies and then he pulled me across an intimidating gap in the path, forever remaining my “Saruni” – “saviour” in Maa.

When he brought his daughter Damaris to Rekero Camp for her 13th birthday, he took her out on the plains for the first time, crossing the Mara River with its crocodiles and hippos. Then he climbed an anthill with her for a slightly higher vantage point to view the hundreds of grazing wildebeest in front of us and explained to her, “This is my office – and it’s a very busy place.”

Outline

EDUCATION: CRITICAL to CONSERVATION
KOIYAKI WILDERNESS GUIDING SCHOOL
CONSERVATION in PRIMARY SCHOOLS
THE CHALLENGES OF CHANGING TIMES
FROM CATTLE to WILDLIFE
TOURISM BRINGS SEWAGE
MARA RIVER WATER USES ASSOCIATION

Key Quotes Having gone to school, I would say education is such an important tool to the Maasai. Fortunately, even if a Maasai doesn’t have any education, he or she can go to the Koiyaki Wilderness Guiding School, an institution which brings education of wildlife and environmental studies to the grass roots. Where do you think the Mara would go if the Maasai weren’t educated? It would go one way – down. – Jackson Looseyia

In our culture, we say the connection between the vegetation, the forest, and the water is life. Without water, there is no life. That is a very important part of our culture that we integrate in with the western lifestyle of education. We are preserving water that gave us absolute life. – Jackson Looseyia

NWNL Jackson, this is a treat to see you on “official business” to record your story and perspective as a conservationist! Thank you. Do start with what you do now, and we’ll go from there.

JACKSON LOOSEYIA I am a guide at Rekero Camp in the Maasai Mara, right on the Talek River [a tributary to the Mara River]. I have worked here for the last 9 years; but I’ve been involved in this company for 25 years.

My first job in the Mara was as a “spotter” working for Ron Beaton, an interesting, intelligent older man [“mzee,” in Swahili] who reinforced the value of conservation in my life. That’s quite a way back, and ever since I’ve moved forward from being a guide.

NWNL You were the first Maasai guide in the Maasai Mara. Is that right?

JACKSON LOOSEYIA Yes, and also I am proud to be the first Maasai naturalist in the Maasai Mara and addressed as a Maasai in the travel industry. In fact, I brought a revolution into guiding in the whole Mara. I’m very proud to live that dream and to see how many other Maasai have entered the travel industry, repeating my principles as a guide.

EDUCATION: CRITICAL to CONSERVATION

NWNL You have experienced the importance of education and are now involved in forming and supporting the first Kenyan Guiding School open to Maasai students.

JACKSON LOOSEYIA As a Maasai growing up and brought up in the Maasai Mara, I have seen many interesting changes, one of them being education. I went to school soon after colonial government left Kenya. Then I was escorted by guns to school. That was an exciting time, since we didn’t know what we were being pushed into. But we were not pushed actually – we were given very good seeds which developed into becoming a very important seed in the Maasai Mara.

Having gone to school, I would say education is such an important tool to the Maasai. Fortunately, even if a Maasai doesn’t have any education, he or she can go to the Koiyaki Wilderness Guiding School, an institution which brings education of wildlife and environmental studies to the grass roots. Where do you think the Mara would go if the Maasai weren’t educated? It would go one way – down. Education is the key to hundreds and hundreds of different jobs.

Think of the changes I’ve seen in the Greater Maasai Mara. Education brought awareness of them into my life. Trees have been disappearing. Being a guide and educated, I know how much life is involved in one single tree. Apart from those big trees, we’ve lost other small vegetation hosting other life that gives us joy and food.

For example, if we lose all the small vegetation, we lose the flowers which bring the bees, which bring the honey – and honey is absolutely a crucial part of Maasai culture. But, without education, I wouldn’t have seen those changes or recognize their impacts. I would have seen and recognized in a different way, but not in an influential way. Now, education for the whole Maasai society, particularly the upcoming young people, is key to the environment and saving it.

NWNL You said that without education, the Mara would go down. Please explain why that why the Maasai don’t understand the importance of the Mara River, the land, the ecosystem, and the wildlife.

JACKSON LOOSEYIA Without education, the Maasai Mara will go down and the Maasai people will go down, due to one very simple fact. Our population in the last ten years is greatly increasing, but the land has not increased. The water has not increased.

Education is helping us create a balanced environment, because without education, we would destroy any tree to build a fence. But with education, we will say, “Wait, wait, we don’t need to kill this tree to make a village. We don’t need to destroy a forest to make hundreds of villages. We can find an alternative.”

Only education can transform that. In our culture, we see the connection between the vegetation, the forest, and the water. Without water, there is no life. That is a very important part of our culture that we integrate with the western lifestyle and education. We are preserving water that gave us absolute life.

Think of just the Talek River alone. It has provided an enormous amount of life to our villages, to our cattle, to our goats, to our lives and to our children. Without the Talek, we would move; but the land itself is not movable. The Maasai people can move somewhere, but if they have no education and they continue destroying the vegetation important for future generations, we soon would have nowhere to move. We would be doomed as a society.

KOIYAKI WILDERNESS GUIDING SCHOOL

NWNL Please describe the education from Koiyaki Wilderness Guiding School for its students and how they take that back to their villages. To me, the brilliance of this school is that its education is not just for those students, but also to share with their family and village. That is a great example of how education can spread – and you were part of the formation of this innovative school.

JACKSON LOOSEYIA The Koiyaki School has brought a really big change to our society. I’ll just give you the very simple example of my life. As a guide at Rekero Camp, I have supported so many of the people within my own village by being an example. The message I take back is:

Look after this environment we depend on. The reason you can go to school is because wildlife produces the income that pays for that school. The reason we have income is because our environment looks good. The reason we have a tourism industry in Kenya is because of the beauty of the land and the environment.

At the Koiyaki School there are many like me. There are 20 at a time. We have already over 100 graduates. The message they take back home is what they have learned from the Koiyaki School. They will implement and spread the facts they’ve learned in this school back in their villages.

So, rather than having one student, you have 100. Once you have 100, you will have 1,000 – and those 1000 can push conservation, and the wildlife, and environment preservation. They can take care of the big stone that was too heavy to push away. But they can only because they’ve got the education. That is the key to the Koiyaki Wilderness Guiding School’s principles.

CONSERVATION in PRIMARY SCHOOLS

NWNL You’ve watched impacts from Koiyaki Guiding School’s curriculum spread out to so many other people – the ripple effect. Is that the source of your dreams of an environmental curriculum in the Maasai Primary Schools?

JACKSON LOOSEYIA I have seen fantastic impacts that Koiyaki Guiding School students have had. These young men who’ve gone on to become guides have become influential leaders within the community by taking home the messages they learned at Koiyaki. Their message is something their community can feel. They can touch a tree, and they know that these trees bring life – which brings water that we all know is crucial to our survival.

Not only do Koiyaki graduates go around and explain, “Oh, this is important.” Now, their knowledge goes back to the grassroots, to the students whose families have also gone the extra mile of paying teachers in the primary schools.

This Maasai Primary School Conservation Curriculum initiative is the dream of all my dreams. I have done lectures and a few talks to primary school students and teachers to introduce a curriculum in the schools. When I spoke of it on the National Television of Kenya, I said that Kenya is so dependent on its environment, thus our environment needs to be kept in good condition so it can be filtered down to upcoming generations. Children are the future of Kenya; and if they don’t get this conservation message while young, why would they look for it later?

I have visited many different places and towns within Kenya – going to great lengths to lecture and talk to children in primary schools, because they are the future of Kenya. If they don’t understand the importance of conservation, we don’t have a future.

THE CHALLENGES of CHANGING TIMES

NWNL We have just watched Maasai children at Olerai Farm studying together. You make it clear that traditionally the Maasai have cared for the environment. Clearly, today’s challenge is to carry on these traditions and to realize we still have more to learn, especially in how to share our traditions and knowledge into solutions.

JACKSON LOOSEYIA I remember as a little boy my father would take me out, pick up a rock and place it next to the tree as he worshipped this tree. The Maasai culture always respected and lived in close harmony to the environment — its water, trees, and big mountains have always been part of our religion. Incorporating that sense of spirituality of the environment has protected the Mara and other Maasai land thus far. However, we’re changing, and we are facing very steep challenges. One of them is the culture has changed, the population has enormously exploded.

Our big population is no longer nomadic, and that is how education has come into the Maasai life. Before growing up, we must have moved 39 times – that many I can remember. I don’t know how many other times before then that my father and his family moved around. Now, we’re permanent, and because our population is big, our land has been and continues to be subdivided. For a nomadic population, that’s a big change. We must look at life in a very different way.

We have absolutely no choice other than to learn to look after the environment more than ever before. We must understand it in a sophisticated way – not only spiritually, as our fathers taught us. That is one challenge.

Our second challenge is that many other cultures are coming here to farm, causing competition. Our people are now using our land for agriculture and leasing land to other people to farm. That takes over much of our grazing land. So, rather than having grass for cattle, we have wheat and maize – and we now have people who may not be as careful towards the environment as we are. Those are the challenges that I see as an elder in the Maasai Mara.

The third challenge we see involves the travel industry. Yes, it brings great money to us, our children and our families, but how much do tourists and the tourism industry care about our environment? How much damage do they do within our environment in the way of vehicles? …in the way of putting in new towns? …the list goes on. Those are challenges we face, and we can only be helped through education.

FROM CATTLE to WILDLIFE

NWNL The Maasai are indeed facing many challenges. Your culture has long been centered around cattle. But now agriculture and tourism challenge the viability of that heritage. How do you envision the future for the Maasai?

JACKSON LOOSEYIA As a Maasai brought up and grown up in the Maasai Mara, the cattle define our culture. We have increased in numbers, which brings a huge challenge to whether the environment we now occupy can sustain our cattle.

We are very prosperous and that has had a huge effect on our cattle. We used to have droughts every ten years. Then the number of our cows would be halved — not the 80% loss we have with current droughts. But, because we now have the tourism income, we can replace that number of cattle immediately into the environment as soon as we have rain. That means we do not allow the grazing areas to rest and replenish.

Over the years, we moved as we lived a nomadic life. Now we are no longer able to migrate or live a nomadic life. This cattle issue is another very, very big challenge we face.

The cattle and the people must leave to lead the quality of life we’ve had. We’re trying to keep our lifestyle based on cattle. It’s not working anymore. We’re still thinking in quantity rather than quality. A man’s importance has always depended on the number of cattle he has. We’ve got a few people who will limit his number of cows to what the environment will be provide.. It’s not in our mind yet, to be honest with you.

It is a big challenge because cows is the primary source of income to the Maasai.

NWNL What sources of income diversification do you foresee – with time – the Maasai can turn to so they don’t have to rely on cattle?

JACKSON LOOSEYIA In future in the Maasai people would be like to change their primary source of income from cattle to something else. We are looking at wildlife and tourism because that is what we have abandoned. If you move further east of the Mara, other people may shift into other cultural means of existence’ but here in the Mara, it will be wildlife and tourism – period.

TOURISM BRINGS SEWAGE

JACKSON LOOSEYIA Growing up in the Maasai Mara and then earning a business in tourism, I have seen that tourism has caused water pollution. One specific pollutant is the sewage. Every other camp in the Mara is on the side of the Mara River or the Talek River. That’s where you build a shelter. Where else do you put your camp? In the middle of the sand? No, of course not. But the management of camps, their usage of water and resulting sewage is a big negative that I personally would change and have addressed professionally.

A few people talk about such changes, but they have not been implemented. I would like to see that. Our government should be getting active and start monitoring every single camp in the Mara to see how they use the water, dispose of their garbage and also investigate other waste management within the Mara. It’s our biggest threat so far in the travel industry.

NWNL How is Rekero Camp addressing that issue?

JACKSON LOOSEYIA Well, tourism comes with a big price. Our camp, Rekero, is the high end of tourism here, so it is in the spotlight. We must do everything perfectly.

Number one, all the water that we get, we absolutely manage in a very, very eco-friendly way. We don’t have any swimming pools. We have showers, and every guest gets 15 liters of water for washing at the end of the day after game drives. So, we have very, very little effort left in needed water conservation. We are very conscious on that subject.

Number two, the toilets we’ve implemented in our system have a proper septic tank which is plastic and buried underground so everything solid is captured. We also have a bacteria biosystem that breaks down all the matter. Soon, we will have a soak way [septic field] which catch and filter the other water with sand, charcoal and rocks underneath. So, the water is filtered before it goes into the table.

Other waste management, like all bottles are recycled – wine bottles, beer bottles, Coca Cola …, everything that we use must be recycled. All the vegetable waste we take out of the Reserve. No vegetable waste should be recycled in the Reserve because they could become invasive. If you think of apples, tomatoes, all the vegetables… none of them are indigenous to Mara. So, we take absolutely everything out of the Mara. I would expect every other tourist lodge in the Mara to follow this.

NWNL Did Gerard [Ron Beaton’s son] say that you truck in all the water that you use? Do you take any water from the river?

JACKSON LOOSEYIA We use two different sources of water in this camp. Obviously, you don’t want to feed your guests water from the Mara River full of hippo dung! All water used for drinking is bottled water that is trucked in. The water we cook with is clean water from a spring that is also trucked in.

There is one better system we could use, but first we need help from environmentalists to tell us how we can filter the Talek River, a tributary from the Mara, since it is too high in sulfur to be used in cooking or drinking water.

JACKSON LOOSEYIA We have a septic tank in every tent, which per the government must be fifty meters away from the Talek River. So, the soak way [septic field] is another few meters away from the septic tank, so that is 70-80 meters away from the Talek River, one of the most important tributaries of the Mara River. That is long way before it begins to percolate into the soil.

NWNL Obviously it would be easier to set up lodges so they dump the effluent straight into the river. Is that done along the Talek or the Mara Rivers or have you just provided the obvious and legal example for tall other lodges here?

JACKSON LOOSEYIA We are setting an example for the many tourist lodges and those who are camping and living within the basins of the Mara River. Many have dumped – or still dump – their effluence into our rivers here. When you go to the loo in this tent and flush your water, it goes into a plastic septic tank 50 meters away from the river – following Kenya law.

NWNL I heard Olonana and Siana camps have nice waste-removal programs. Are you and they part of a majority now being diligent about wastewater?

JACKSON LOOSEYIA Fortunately, a majority of camps do not flush into the rivers now. I have friends in the government who are watch dogs of every single camp. For example, here at Rekero Camp, we’ve are inspected, which includes their taking an analysis of the water from the toilet, from the septic tank and the overflow into the soak way. They sample it all.

Yes, some of the lodges and camps in the Mara still discharge their septic tanks back in the Mara and Talek Rivers. Fortunately, not all! Nowadays, there is change, and we’re very happy they are eco-friendly to the environment so many of us live in.

MARA RIVER WATER USERS ASSOCIATION

NWNL This week we met and talked with Tarquin Wood and his father Hugo Wood about their Mara River Water Users Association. They haven’t been able to get any of the Mara tourist lodges or camps to join this group. They admitted they probably hadn’t tried as hard as they should have, but they want to get stakeholders and water users all along the Mara River to join this group as stakeholders working together to monitor themselves. Have you heard of the group and do you know why Mara camps and lodges haven’t joined?

JACKSON LOOSEYIA I think the reason us because we have not heard of the Mara River Water Users Association.

NWNL We keep hearing that.

JACKSON LOOSEYIA Many people do not raise awareness in a professional way. They talk among themselves and end up as a small group. When you’re talking about national issues that are touch lives, water, you’ve got to talk loudly.

If you whisper only to yourself basically, you’re just a drop of rain in the ocean. You’ll never make a difference. Kenya has a lot of champions, including Ron and Gerard Beaton and Brian Heath. They have a way of championing things that brings positive effects into the environment of their daily life.

Think of the Mara without the Maasai Mara, the wildlife and the Mara River. Do you think my life would be this way without them? I would be finished. What about my children? What about my family? I’m completely dependent on the wildlife and tourism here – and if the Mara River is dead, the wildlife will be gone. My job will be gone. My family will be gone. We’ll be living in a big mess. We need big solutions.

NWNL Your comment clearly expresses the need for communication upstream and downstream. We need to work and collaborate – and speak loudly to take care of the issue.

JACKSON LOOSEYIA This is the first time I’ve heard about the Mara River Water Users Association. We would surely like to make the communications better for the whole Mara. We are all using Mara River water for our cattle, for tourism, for other uses, so we need to hear about all potential solutions.

I suggest the people within that association should speak louder and to better educate others because water protection and conservation in the Mara are important – especially for us Maasai, who are the key users of the Mara River water. It’s very important that we get the education that is necessary to the elders, to the ladies, and to the children who are the very, very key users of the water. The children need to know the purpose of water for their future.

CRITICALITY of MARA RIVER & CHANGE IT FACES

JACKSON LOOSEYIA If there’s a river that’s important to Kenya, it’s the Mara River, and we are all crying, “Mara River! save the Mara River.” We’re making as much noise as we can from every angle to save the Mara River. Not only do families depend on it, but also the tens of thousands of migrating wildebeest. The Mara is the nucleus to the whole travel industry in Kenya. So, if “The Mara River Glory” is gone, Kenya’s glory is gone, to be honest with you.

NWNL Do you worry about the Mara River’s the water levels – and those here on the Talek?

JACKSON LOOSEYIA I’m not particularly concerned. It will come up. It will go down. This is just a normal cycle of drought now. Maybe as global warming gets hotter, many pools in the Talek will dry and impactg hippopotamus and crocodiles and elephant – and of course the Maasai, as well. Where we live by the Talek River, we will have some problems, but not as huge as those on the Mara River.

If you are to bang the drums hard, hit them for the Mara River. If you’re going to shout loud, shout loud about the Mara River. The Mara River is the river that we all need to cry over because it holds such important life.

NWNL Yes, conservation must continue with solutions, education and communication.

JACKSON LOOSEYIA Alison Jones and Alison Fast and Tari Wako who is guiding you, I thank you all – and the entire No Water No Life organization that put this expedition together to raise awareness for my country because it involves my life. Thank you very much. God bless you.

NWNL God bless you, “Saruni.” May you stay as calm and confident as you were on our six days climbing Mount Kilimanjaro!

Posted by NWNL on May 27, 2024.
Transcription edited and condensed for clarity by Alison M. Jones.

A Maasai Perspective on the Mara Mara River Basin