Hi all, I'm Lainie, a guide with the hiking group Adventures in Good Company, and I've had the true joy of guiding our Tanzania trip, where Lemra was our highlands trip Maasai guide. Lemra is a friend and is an inspirational, amazing community leader of the Engero Sero Maasai community, a semi-nomadic clan that survives largely off of livestock and has almost no physical belongings that they can't pack up and carry on donkeys.

Lemra serves many roles in his community, and one important one is to help the Maasai women, most of whom are uneducated and married at very young ages. On my visit this year, I had the joy of meeting his eldest daughter, Beatrice, who is finishing her degree to become the first-ever Maasai pharmacist in the region. Lemra has sacrificed so much to pay for the school fees for Beatrice, having to sell the majority of his cattle.

Lemra does not only help out his family but the community at large. One project he has set up is a recycling center (donating his land), which is run by women who recycle plastic bottles and glass to make handicrafts to sell to tourists. Lemra is helping the women in the community (Lemra and his family live near a town with permanent structures and burns its rubbish) as well as the community at large.

We are fundraising to support the recycling center for two aims: 1. To buy a motorcycle and cart so that the center can pick up recycling from the community. 2. Support for the women to produce and sell their products.

The Maasai people have very few belongings and rely on their herds for almost everything (food, dung to build huts, skins to sleep on, etc.). They simply have no easy way to accumulate cash to fund these areas without selling off their livestock.

A little bit can go such a long way. Please help us.