In fact, Lepeta and his band of traditionally-minded warriors are the first lot to benefit from the Kalama youth fund. “We plan to set up M-Pesa and livestock businesses,” he said.
And Lalampaa’s ‘soft skills’ must have played no small part in getting them over their suspicion of loans.
Boru on the other hand say he isn’t losing sleep over the loan repayments on account of the very same, deeply rooted community values. “If even one of them defaults, the community itself will take corrective measures even without our prompting.”
Looking at it from the Maslow’s Hierarchy point of view, self-actualisation can only be achieved once physiological concerns and financial security for that matter, are no longer an immediate concern.
Put another way, Lalampaa’s thinking is that the man in the wild can only co-exist peacefully with the animals in the wild if they’re not put in position where they have to compete for the same resources.
“It’s still fresh in my memory how I’d suffer a beating for allowing wild dogs to chomp on our animals when I was a child. It was considered reckless. But it was horrid to watch. It wasn’t quick or merciful; they’d go about tearing bits of flesh off of them.”
And so it is that morans for whom it was once considered a rite of passage to kill a lion, have turned entrepreneur.
“If you give them their space (wild animals) they don’t bother with you (man). Conservation really is as simple as that,” or at least it is for Lepeta who works as a spotter for a tour company.
But maybe not quite so simple for Lalampaa who has dedicated the last 12 years of his working life to the cause: “I never envisioned for myself a life in the city. I’ve always been a part of nature. When I go into Nairobi for a meeting I usually just buy a tie off of the hawkers because I’ll only need it for the duration of the sit down. I like eating my meat straight off the bone.”
A life Lalampaa will bring to life for the duration of a lecture when he receives his latest accolade at the Stamford Law School campus in California on Wednesday. “I did a course at Stamford. It was different from any class I’d ever known. They had coffee.”
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