Her
Terrain
IT’S
JUST BEFORE sunrise when Lucy Serea puts on her
military-green uniform, hitches binoculars over
one shoulder, and slips her feet into a pair of
pink Crocs. As dawn breaks over the ranger base
on the outskirts of Amboseli National Park — a
40,000-hectare UNESCO-designated biosphere
reserve in southern Kenya — Serea joins 16 other
female rangers for a morning jog and stretch.
The women sing traditional songs in their native
Maa language while they work out in the open
grassland. Beyond them, across the border in
Tanzania, Mount Kilimanjaro rises from the
clouds.
At
9:00 a.m., Serea, a 27-year-old Maasai woman
bearing her clan’s traditional circular scars on
each cheek and one burned ear, replaces her pink
Crocs with combat boots for her first wildlife
patrol of the day. This is the daily routine of
the members of Team Lioness — one of Kenya’s
rare all-female ranger units.
Most
days, these women walk long distances,
patrolling the 147,000 hectares of community
lands around Amboseli that are part of a
critical elephant corridor between the reserve
and Kilimanjaro National Park in Tanzania. Home
to around 2,000 elephants, at least 50 other
mammal species, and 400 bird species, Amboseli
is located in one of the most poaching-prone
regions of East Africa. The rangers monitor
elephant migration routes, track wild animal
behavior, look for signs of unauthorized hunting
such as traps and animal remains, and gather
intelligence from community members. In other
words, they act as the first line of defense
against poaching, including the retaliatory
killing of wild animals who destroy crops or
harm humans. What’s more, they do this taxing
work in the face of entrenched prejudices within
their communities where the assumption is that a
Maasai man is stronger, wiser, and more capable
than a woman.
Most
of the 17 Team Lioness rangers are the only
Maasai women in their families with formal, paid
jobs. In traditional Maasai culture, women are
mainly responsible for domestic work like
cleaning their manyattas (mud huts),
cooking, collecting water, and caring for
children. Men rear cattle and are typically the
ones who might hold outdoor jobs, such as in
conservation work.
In
a culture still dominated by men, Serea and her
colleagues are not just changing the gender
equation in the field of conservation, they are
also breaking away from outdated yet persistent
patriarchal traditions like polygamy, child
marriage, and a life confined to domesticity.
Along the way, they are serving as powerful role
models for women and girls in their communities
and beyond.
Journalist Nikole Wintermeier
and photographer Clara Watt profile Kenya’s
all-female Maasai wildlife ranger team whose
members are redefining what conservation means
for wildlife, local communities, and
themselves.
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