Life for Masai people in Kenya can be hard. Women spend much of their time collecting firewood for cooking and heating in their manyattas – forays that often lead to dangerous encounters with elephants and damage to the environment.
The Travel Foundation is supporting the work of the consultancy Tribal Voice Communications to help these women and their families by providing the means to create a safer, easier and less destructive fuel source – cow dung briquettes.
Five villages have already been provided with training and equipment to make cow dung briquettes. By using this alternative, lower carbon fuel source, the women are contributing to the fight against climate change and helping to reduce deforestation, a growing problem in the Masai Mara.
Each Masai village keeps several hundred cows, so there is no shortage of cow dung, and surplus briquettes can be sold to safari lodges, creating a valuable source of income.
The reduced need for firewood forays also means the women have more time for other activities, including crafting beadwork curios to sell to tourists.
Priscilla Koitat from Enkereri Village has already benefitted from the project. She said: “Since we started making briquettes, the women spend more time in the village instead of collecting firewood, which means that we can now do many things we couldn’t do before.
“We also have fewer problems with elephants. Our cows now provide us with our fuel – they do many things for the Masai”.
Tribal Voice Communications senior consultant Dr Cheryl Mvula said: “This initiative is a winner all round – for the environment, for the Masai women and for tourist lodges in the area.
“The Masai already using the briquettes have reported a 75% reduction in their firewood collection – this means trees are being saved, and there is less conflict with dangerous wildlife.
“Tourist lodges can now buy briquettes from the Masai as an alternative to wood or charcoal for heating water for showers [in lodges], and importantly, the Masai women have a new income stream that will help to trade themselves out of poverty.”
Funding will be used to extend this simple but effective idea to five more villages in the northern part of the Masai Mara, changing the lives of about 500 more women for the better, and helping to protect the unique and beautiful environment in which they live.