Enduimet WMA

Over the last few days, I found out what my project with the African Wildlife Foundation would officially be. I am in charge of creating the business plan for a Wildlife Management Area (WMA) called Enduimet, which is located just West of Mt. Kilimanjaro. The WMA is a community-chartered and organized association where about 8 villiages came together to figure out how they can conserve the area, while developing it just enough to start making enough money to lift themselves out of poverty.

Thursday, I got a chance to visit the WMA. It is located 2 hours from Arusha and has a beautiful countryside. The inhabitants are mostly part of the Kisongo Masaai tribe, so they are traditionally pastoralists. They are some of the most welcoming, wonderful people I have met anywhere in the world. While I was there, I traveled around much of the WMA, checking out existing campsites and interviewing their managers to get a better idea of how the tourism industry in the immediate area works.

In the middle of the day, we ended up driving around in the Kitenden Wildlife Corridor. This corridor facilitates the migration of many animals between Amboseli National Park in Kenya and Kilimanjaro and Arusha National Parks in Tanzania. The landscape was incredibly beautiful - typical of what you picture Africa looking like based on the Discovery Channel - lush green islands of trees and scrubs in a sea of roadless brown dust. We saw a plethora of animals including gazettes, baboons, zebra, giraffes, elephants, and wildebeests. We even crossed the Kenyan border and since there were no roads or signs, we were free to criss-cross the land as we pleased (not the best thing to do if you’re interested in conserving it, but that is something the community knows they need to look at).



The highlight of the trip was actually the ride home when we picked up a Masaai hitchhiker who was trying to get back to Arusha for school. His name was Metwiy and after I figured out that he spoke English, we had a great chat about the Masaai culture. Masaai are able to marry multiple wives, so his dad had a wife in Olmoti (one of the villages in the Enduimet WMA) and Ngorongoro. He had 7 siblings and 6 half-siblings. Since the Masaai are traditionally pastoralists, half of the kids in a typical family are chosen to go to school, while half of them stay home to tend the cattle. Unfortunately, I got him to admit that most of the time the women get the shaft. The males' families pay a dowry of cattle as a brideprice and many times marriages are still arranged – sometimes when the girls are still in secondary school. However, times are changing because you are free to marry whoever you want, and Metwiy had a cell phone and email address. I’ve got video of him explaining his incredible life that I’ll post later. It was fun to get such an up-close look at one of the last remaining traditional world cultures.



This little guy was tending a herd of goats out in the middle of nowhere with his brother. In Africa, it seems there are zero child labor laws. I see children as young as six tending livestock, driving carts, and hauling huge bundles of sticks and water. In fact, I see far more children working than adults. I guess those are the unlucky ones that don't get to go to school. :(