Team Lioness: Meet Maasai female rangers who are up to the challenge in Kenya – Tek Portal

(CNN) —
Packing her bags to go home for the first time in over four months, Maasai ranger Purity Lakara — who patrols lands in Kenya’s Amboseli National Park, known for its free-roaming elephants and views of Mount Kilimanjaro — is overjoyed to be seeing her family for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic was declared.

“I missed eating together, playing and hanging around with my baby girl, fetching water for my mum — even helping my brothers herding cattle. I have missed everything that we usually do while I’m at home,” she says.
Lakara, 23, is one of eight women — the first in their families to secure employment — who make up Team Lioness, a unit within the Olugului Community Wildlife Rangers (OCWR).
The rangers patrol the Olugului/Olarashi Group Ranch (OOGR), a 580-square-mile horseshoe of community-owned land that almost encircles Amboseli National Park, a safari destination 134 miles southeast of Nairobi.

Children run to welcome Purity Amleset Lakara, a member of the all-female IFAW-supported Team Lioness on her arrival at her home village in Meshenani, Amboseli, in Kenya.
Paolo Torchio/IFAW

When Kenya closed its regional and international borders and the tourism industry and livestock markets on which the community depends disappeared, OCWR canceled all leave and asked its rangers, including Team Lioness, to stay at their posts indefinitely to protect wildlife from desperate poachers. Now that the country is cautiously yet optimistically opening and safari visitors are returning, the rangers are finally able to return to their villages, two by two.
When Lakara arrived in Meshenani on July 29, she was met by neighbors and family members who escorted her to her home, singing and clapping as she cradled her 2-year-old daughter.

Purity Amleset Lakara is escorted home by her eldest brother Maantoi Lakara and other members of her family.
Paolo Torchio/IFAW

“My mother said that she was very happy right now because I’m back. She say that they have been longing for this day, so they are all here near me, enjoying and celebrating again,” says Lakara, who is the sole breadwinner for her 11-member family.

Genesis of Team Lioness

Team Lioness was established by the global nonprofit International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) in early 2019 after Maasai community leader Kiruyan Katamboi, affectionately referred to as Mama Esther, challenged the organization to employ women from the community as rangers.

A typical day for Team Lioness might begin at 5 a.m. with a run and breakfast, followed by a briefing and morning patrol, which typically takes four hours.
Paolo Torchio/IFAW

Because Maasai communities are patriarchal, women are excluded from leadership and decision making and the community ranger unit that patrols the Group Ranch was exclusively male.
Christopher Kiarie, IFAW program operations and grants manager, says that while IFAW was enthusiastic about the suggestion, men in the OCWR and wider community were skeptical that women were up to the job. The community lands are vast, almost half the size of the state of Rhode Island, and a typical OCWR patrol can cover 12 miles of difficult terrain on foot, often in poor conditions.
Unlike the Kenya Wildlife Service, which patrols the Amboseli National Park, the OCWR are unarmed, so have to rely on skill when dealing with dangerous animals or violent people and call KWS for back-up if they think a situation might turn nasty.
Even the women nominated for Team Lioness, one by each of the community’s eight clans, had their doubts.
“Before I was thinking like I would not make it,” admits ranger Sharon Nankinyi. “But after we were training, then we became very strong ladies. We proved to the community that what a man can do, a woman can do better.”

Grueling work

Under normal conditions, Team Lioness rangers typically work three weeks on, when they rotate around the OCWR’s six camps and mobile unit, and one week off.
A typical day might begin at 5 a.m. with a run and breakfast, followed by a briefing and morning patrol, which typically takes four hours. Depending on their daily assignments, the rangers might spend the afternoon on base, ready to respond to an emergency call before a debrief of the day’s activities.
Other than occupying separate sleeping and bathing quarters, they do exactly the same job as their 68 male colleagues and are assigned patrols in co-ed groups of varying sizes.

Community ranger Eunice Mantei Nkapaiya sits with her colleagues in their camp. The women were away from their families for months while they worked the bush.
Will Swanson/IFAW

They note the locations and activities of wildlife, talk with members of the local community to learn of any suspicious or problematic activity, and pitch in whenever help is needed — perhaps getting a stuck baby elephant out of a muddy waterhole or locating children who have roamed too far from the village.
While two-thirds of the men in the ranger unit are illiterate, the members of Team Lioness are educated…