"The Mamas"

In Maasai culture, female relatives are all called "Mama" and one day Clamian took us to meet his "Mamas".  This was actually a women's co-op created to help women support their families.  You see, when a Maasai woman loses her husband to AIDS, illness or anything else, she becomes ineligible to re-marry and must provide for her children.

Clamian is a Maasai Junior Elder, so it is his responsibility to help his people.  He created this co-op to help these women support their children.  He told us a story about how one of his clients bought a cow for one of the women, giving her milk for her children and a degree of wealth, as in their culture, wealth is measured in cattle.


This large group of women make jewelry to sell to tourists.  Each one of them has a story, and we were anxious to help.

 We had such fun buying pieces that we thought would sell in the new Etsy Store, Jambo Creations

Now we had the connection, the circle was complete.  We could support the "Mamas" by buying their jewelry as the starting point for our own creations, sell it online, and send the profits to help the school to buy textbooks. 

We bid the "Mamas" goodbye and Clamian assured us that we had helped some people eat better that day.