Sometimes my husband and I think we must have gone mad to start such a business, but we see the hardships brought to the Maasai by the relentless flow of urbanization and know that without a bridge to join the modern economy, these people will not be able to afford their lifestyle as times change.  Children are now schooled in government or missionary schools and this costs money.  Modern health care costs money, and transportation for provisions for a once nomadic society now comes at a price.  We have seen a future where the children will have to move to the city to find work, and the customs and culture of the once proud Maasai will fade quickly into history. 

Imagine employing 900 people working without electricity for light or equipment, roads to transport goods and buildings in which to assemble your products.  Imagine building a business where centuries long customs bumps against modern work ethics, where traditional values clash with western values, and where long-term vision is lost to a subsistence-only view.  Every day an interesting new difference between our worlds emerge.  In order to provide opportunity without inflicting change, we have worked hard to carefully structure our business for the people with whom we live.  We employ twice as many we need because the women must be free to come and go as life dictates: the leopard killed a goat so a few women must go with the young to watch the herd for the day; or an important celebration has called many women to build a manyata; a temporary ceremonial village, and spend several weeks preparing for the feast of change. 

 Now that we have expanded to reach more than 900 women across the Rift Valley, we often become embroiled in local politics and we always run into problems unimaginable to the city business owner.  Our first payday, we carried 125 envelopes, a woman’s name of each envelope, to one of our work stations in the bush.  After calling all the names, there were many women left who had not stepped forward to collect their pay.  We discovered that for every day that they came to work, the women had given a new name.  After several weeks, they could not recall the aliases given.  Each person in Maasai society holds a unique spot in the clan and in Maasai history, which dates back to the 15^th century.  A selection of names paints a picture not only of who you are, but where you fit in terms of territory and clan as told through 600 years of history.  It took three weeks to deliver the 125 envelopes. 

 The women walk miles to a workstation each day, sometimes taking two hours each way.  They come with babies tied to their backs and sit on the ground- their preference- under the acacia trees beading until lunchtime. A long Christian prayer is led in their native dialect, “Maa, ” by someone they elect each day; then they enjoy a light lunch of cooked maize meal and milk brought in a calabash, a lovely beaded gourd.  Many put in a seven-hour day even through they have  a long walk home- they want to earn the much needed income.  We emply all who want the work: the blind, the elderly, the destitute, teacher out of work, and shopkeepers who have no business of their own in hard times. 

 It has not been easy to build a business that is beholden to the western values of delivering orders on time, within strict specifications, in a world belonging to the nomadic herdsman where time is told by the seasons and priorities are set by the immediate need.  As I sit on my rock watching the beautifully adorned women who sparkle like jewels as they walk home across the Rift Valley, bathed in the low peach light of dusk, babies asleep on their backs and calabashs swinging at their hips, I think of them bridging their traditional past with the necessities of modern life to keep their culture, as well as their families, alive, and I don’t feel so crazy after all.