Asilia Safari Lodge

Asilia Lodges operate some of the best luxury camps in Northern Tanzania, and a Northern Circuit itinerary is not complete without a stay in one of these camps.

Asilia Lodges Community and Conservation
The Honeyguide Foundation is a grassroots organization dedicated to community support and to the conservation of wildlife. This is being achieved through long-term community partnerships. Established in 2006 by the Asilia Group, the Foundation is an independent entity that supports specific projects in the areas where the Group has a presence.

The Foundation is trying to cover a wide range of different projects. These projects include education, supporting small local, eco-friendly businesses and initiating land use plans. Other initiatives being undertaken are - Environmental initiatives that aim to conserve community resources, community health care and conservation awareness.

Many communities, especially in the rural areas where Asilia operate, are poor and lacking in education. They may not even be aware of their basic rights to land, water and honest leadership.

With more than a decade's experience in Tanzania, Asilia believe the most successful projects are those initiated from within a community - rather than those imposed from outside. A selected community must be able to articulate its issues, needs and vision to the Foundation, rather than simply being handed a solution.

Each community is unique. The challenge for the Foundation is to evaluate sensitively the status and progress of each community's capability as well as to monitor and help guide the individual projects. Honesty and commitment have to be evident on our part too. This means constant evaluation of Asilia’s own progress - and sometimes admitting they’ve got it wrong. This means setting long-term goals - with enough immediate short-term results to encourage.

By encouraging self-awareness and good leadership at a focused, grass-roots level, the Foundation envisions that our partner communities will pull themselves out of poverty. This will therefore achieve sustainability for the projects and at the same time, the communities will become stable, imaginative and progressive contributors to the preservation of the country's wildlife and wild places.


SAYARI / OLAKIRA - SERENGETI
An estimated 60% of all households in Bunda and Serengeti Districts, west of the park, regularly consume or sell bush meat. Sales of such meat provide each household with about $ 617 a year.

MACHOCHWE WARD AGRICULTURAL PROJECT
"We wanted to bring direct benefits to local farmers," says project manager William Joseph Zungu. "It's important that local people know us and we are not just strangers driving by on their way to the park." This innovative project has brought high quality, organic farming to villages in the western Serengeti and farmers can sell their produce to tourist lodges and camps.

Working with Machochwe Ward Agricultural Officer, Nyakabaya Dimafuru, Zungu visited several villages along the park boundary. Five were selected. Each village then chose a plot of suitable land and created a "kikundi" - a co-operative - to provide labor and management. Each kikundi has four members, plus the owner of the plot who serves as Chairman. Profits are divided equally. The project provides the kikundis with specific seeds and seedlings - initially for free, and then at cost. Dimafuru, who is known locally as "Bwana Shamba" (Mr. Garden) monitors the kikundis weekly on his bicycle. "It is a great opportunity to introduce organic farming to the area," he says. He is investigating the use of certain flower species and biodegradable soap to replace pesticides. "The villagers feel really good about making money and learning something new."

MERENGA VILLAGE COMMUNITY LODGE
The Mara river bends slowly into view, a thick muddy soup in the rains, but clear and sandy and perfect for swimming in the dry season. There are rocks for sunning, pools for fishing, a fat Amarula tree for shade. A hundred yards away, Serengeti National Park begins, spreading away into tall grass and low hills. Asilia's project manager Gian Schachenmann saw the potential for tourism and suggested that the foundation sponsors the building of a campsite and small, self-catering lodge; the village would learn to care for and manage it - and reap the profit. The Merenga Village Community Lodge gives the local community a chance to attract the growing backpacker and mid-price range tourist looking for alternatives to the park. The four guest bungalows, kitchen and lounge bungalows will be built entirely with funds from Sayari Camp in local materials and in local Wakuria style. Hiking in a nearby nature reserve, mountain-biking through surrounding farmland, swimming and fishing in the river are offered for the more adventurous.

TARANGIRE OLIVER’S CAMP
Terat Village is 40 kilometres from Tarangire National Park; "Too far to walk in one day,". Yet what happens in Terat bears mightily on the future of the park, for it lies in the middle of the Simanjiro Plains where thousands of wildebeest come to give birth each rainy season. The grass here is rich in phosphorous, a mineral crucial to lactating mothers. And the cows also prosper here. But in Terat, as elsewhere on the plains, immigrants and local Maasai have begun farming.

TERAT VILLAGE INITIATIVE
The Terat Village Initiative was launched in 2005 by a collective group of tour operators, including Oliver's Camp, specifically to halt the expansion of this unsustainable land use pattern. Currently, the bulk of the Initiative's financial support goes directly to the village to fund the construction of its primary and secondary schools. In exchange, the village has agreed not to farm on the plains. The Initiative also supports a village anti-poaching team. Four Game Scouts (Abraham is one of them) have been provided with bicycles, binoculars, telephones and salaries. The scouts patrol each day, systematically covering six different routes and reporting any poaching or charcoal burning incidents to authorities in the Wildlife Division and in Tarangire National Park. Although they have no legal right to stop the perpetrators, and response from the authorities is limited, Abraham believes that the scouts are a deterrent: "If they see us and know we are watching, they will just go somewhere else." Meanwhile the village has become more proactive, pursuing court cases over land ownership issues with several immigrant farmers and hiring a surveyor to settle boundary disputes with a neighboring village. And, for now, the wildebeest still have access to the grazing and calving grounds they've used for a million years.

SUYAN CAMP – LOLIONDO (Eastern Serengeti)
The village of Ololosokwan lies in a shallow valley encircled by low, green hills. At first glance, the village is little more than a scenic bend in the dirt track on route to Loliondo town. But in fact Ololosokwan is a self-made success story- the country's leading example of community-based ecotourism. It is also a test case for major land rights issues.

THE OLOLOSOKWAN VILLAGE HOSPITAL FUND
Less than a decade ago, the predominantly Masai village of 4.000 decided to develop several tourism ventures. These now generate more than USD 57.000 annually for the community- more than any village in Tanzania earns from wildlife-based enterprises, and significantly more than any other village in the surrounding Loliodo area.

The village carefully invests the money in itself: the mabati covered primary and secondary school buildings, teachers' houses, dormitories and village offices. 90% of the local village children attend primary school. More than 20 local children receive scholarships paid for by the village- three of which even to university. Apart from the scholarships teacher's salaries are paid, a village health center funded as well as a clinic, a village ambulance a village doctor.

The Honeyguide foundation is involved in the Ololosokwan Village Hospital Fund - a 10-bed hospital that is currently built by the village - a much anticipated addition to its day clinic. Suyan Camp contributes to the hospital with medical equipment and supplies, doctors' and nurses' salaries.

In the long term, the Hospital Fund could also pay for additional training for staff, as well as an outreach program to educate the community about health care issues such as rabies, HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

MATEMWE - ZANZIBAR
Every high tide, the fishermen of Kigomani village - close to Matemwe - sail or motor out the reef and beyond to reap what they can from the sea. They have been doing this for years and years but so much has changed. Twenty years ago there were no hotels in Matemwe - but after first realization to sell "sun, sand and sea" - the tourism boom began.

THE KIGOMANI VILLAGE FUND

Len and Katharina Horlin, the two Swedish sisters who built Matemwe Bungalows in 1990, were mindful and inclusive of the villagers from the start. Money raised by the hotel has significantly contributed to the construction of village school buildings, a school library, and a village clinic as well as the purchase of a bus for transport to Stone Town. A government water pipeline to the bungalows was extended to the village using hotel funds. These are only a few examples of the initiatives of Matemwe that have helped its surrounding community- still today Matemwe and the trust are very active in their supporting work, i.e.: completing the primary school building; providing school materials such as books, chairs, desks and blackboards; funding scholarships for further education, including university level studies and hotel studies; participating in and partly funding an annual village clean-up; contributing to the village's sea turtle protection program; paying a guard to protect the crucial Hawksbill Turtle nesting ground; and sponsoring a school lunch program to boost the children's nutrition.