Tourists who visit Kenya and pay for Maasai village tours in the good faith that they are contributing to the villager’s welfare are frequently deceived, it was alleged today.

The "scam" was exposed by a British woman who says that tour drivers are taking tour fees from villagers and passing only a fraction of the money over.

Dr Cheryl Mvula, a freelance responsible tourism consultant for Tribal Voice Communications, says she has received death threats over her attempts to stop the practise.

The alleged scam came to light when Dr Mvula visited Kenya last year on a wildlife conservation project and took a Maasai village tour.

“I wondered why the villagers were pushing so hard to sell curios to tourists when they were supposedly making money from the cultural tours,” she told Times Online Travel.

“Then I found out that the tour drivers were charging tourists $20 each for the tour and passing on as little as $1 to the villagers. The tours are hugely popular and mean drivers are raking in more than $10 million a year at the expense of the Maasai.”

Mvula’s solution has been to work with villagers, hotels, safari lodges and tour operators to set up a payment system that sees tour money go directly into the bank accounts accessed only by the villagers.

So far the system has benefited five Maasai villages, which were losing around $11,500 a month, enough to install a borehole and get access to clean water. But overturning the corruption has not been easy. “Drivers have a lot of power here and when challenged can threaten to ensure tourists only see grass - in other words no wildlife - when they go on their safari drives in the Masai Mara Game Reserve.”

Helping Mvula to overcome resistance from the drivers was one of the Game Reserve lodges, Kichwa Tembo Tented Camp, and also the Kenya Association of Tour Operators.

Mvula has also been supported by funding from the Travel Foundation, a UK charity that promotes sustainable tourism. Director Sue Hurdle, said: “The new project in Kenya addresses an issue that is not restricted to the Mara Triangle, or even to Kenya. As a charity we really endeavor to work on projects that, once successful, can be replicated in other areas around the world where similar issues exist.”

In the nine months since the initiative started, the five villages in the pilot scheme have earned over $30,000 from tour fees, an 800 per cent increase on the same period last year. Already villagers have built a school for the youngest Maasai children, three teachers have been employed, a rainwater harvesting system installed and long-drop toilets built.

"All this development is due to the Maasai's own efforts in running a tourism venture - not charity or aid. Before there were 300 children sat in the villages not going to school - now all families can afford school fees", says Mvula.

Ben Rrramet is a village elder from Enkereri, one of the five villages in the scheme. He says only good has come from Mvula’s work: "We now know our rights. The money that they used to hide from us [tour drivers] we now have that knowledge of knowing that this money is rightfully ours – it belongs to us, it is our property like our cows.

"It belongs to the Maasai, not to them. It is our business, our sweat, and our culture that we are sharing with visitors. And now for the first time in over 30 years of running these tours we are benefiting. This is something very good indeed".

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