Cultural respect

Sopa — hello. The Maasai people have lived with the wildlife of this ecosystem for centuries. The conservancy model that makes our flights possible is, at its heart, a land-lease agreement with hundreds of individual Maasai landowners.

When you pay a conservancy fee you are paying rent to a family that owns the ground beneath you.

Always ask before you photograph a Maasai person, especially anyone in cultural dress (shuka, beadwork, ceremonial ochre). The answer is often yes; sometimes it is no, and that no is the end of the conversation. Do not photograph children without a parent present and consenting.

A smile, eye contact, and a gestured camera is a polite request in any language; Aingurai aaata? — may I take a photograph? — is better.

Cattle, sheep, and goats are wealth, identity, and inheritance in Maasai culture, not picturesque scenery. Photographing someone's herd without asking is roughly equivalent to photographing the inside of a stranger's home. Ask the herder. If you are travelling through a boma (homestead), ask the elder.

If your itinerary includes a visit to a manyatta (cultural village), the village fee is paid through the conservancy or through your camp — never in cash to an individual unless that person is the elder receiving the group. This protects the equity of the visit and keeps the income within the community's own distribution system.

Please do not give sweets, money, pens, or balloons to children you meet. It teaches a transactional reflex toward outsiders that the community has spent years working to undo, and dental care in the Mara is not what it is at home. The school and bursary programmes funded through your conservancy fee do more lasting good than anything you can hand out of a vehicle window.

A handful of words goes a long way. Sopa (hello), reply Ipa. Takwenya (good morning) to an elder, reply Iko. Ashe (thank you), Ashe naleng (thank you very much). Sere (goodbye). Pronunciation is forgiving; the effort is what is heard.

Your conservancy fee is split, by formal agreement, between landowner lease payments, ranger salaries and anti-poaching operations, community schools and bursaries, and water infrastructure — boreholes, troughs, and pipelines that serve both wildlife and Maasai households in the dry season. It is not a donation. It is the operating budget of the place you are flying over.

We avoid landing among grazing herds wherever the wind allows us a choice. When we cannot, the pilot will hold off as long as fuel permits, and the chase crew will speak with the herder before the basket is packed. If a fence line, a boma, or a watering point is nearby, we will not unload guests there — we will move first.