The Elephant Mamas LAMP began this week in Mayianat, a community conservancy near Dol Dol in Laikipia North, about 52 kilometres north of Nanyuki: three days of training, Monday to Wednesday, for thirty women, led by Heiz Wadegu and Esther Gilisho of Forward Consulting.
The women in this cohort live inside a major elephant corridor. Elephants are part of the day’s arithmetic: when to walk to the river for water so as not to arrive at the same time as the herd, which paths to take, when to keep the children close. The training itself started late for that reason. On the first morning the women could not get to the venue, because elephants were standing on the road.
Mayianat sits where the Isiolo, Samburu and Laikipia ecosystems meet, on the route elephants use between Mount Kenya and the northern grazing lands. The Northern Rangelands Trust took the conservancy into its network in 2023 for exactly that reason. The Laikipia plateau is where elephant cows come to give birth, and Mayianat is the corridor pregnant matriarchs walk through to reach the birthing grounds, with the permanent water and forage that nursing mothers need. Laikipia County holds 42 percent of Kenya’s second-largest elephant population.
That is the setting for a leadership and management course, and it is exactly why Allan Ward, who runs LAMP, calls this one important. The Elephant Mamas are the people who manage the daily interface between a community and the wildlife it lives beside. After three days, Allan reports that “the women are so thankful and are getting so much from the training.” At least two of them have sons in the Rangeland LAMP for Moran herders that Forward Consulting runs with Natural State. Allan will send more as the course goes on, and we will post it here.
The Elephant Mamas LAMP is funded by the Pettus Crowe Foundation, whose president, Irene Crowe, sits on MSWC’s Advisory Board.
Photo and video: Allan Ward, Forward Consulting.