Different Chair, Same Table

11 Years ago, the first thing I did at Angama was cook. I never meant to leave that kitchen, but one role led to another: the management board, carrying the Angama Way, building Amboseli from nothing, and now back to the Mara as General Manager. I've never sat in one chair for long. It turns out that's how you come to know a place, and it's how almost everyone I work with is coming to know it now.

When we started, there were five of us, trying to recruit a team out of almost nothing. Over 200 people came to interview, and we ran the whole thing from a single staff block, because that was the only block we had ready. We hired 60; then we grew to 87, then 100, and somewhere along the way to 160 here in the Mara. What still moves me most is that, 11 years later, around 80% of those early people are still with us.

And they have not stood still. The team of 16 I recruited for the kitchen now includes Sous Chefs, Assistant Head Chefs, and some in senior positions down at Amboseli. Ibrahim went from Butler to Senior Butler to Angama Safri Camp Host to General Manager at Amboseli. I could fill this page with names. When we opened Amboseli, over 400 people came to interview for a handful of jobs and the five heads of department who went south with me became 24, and we hired 75 more.

Now the moving has become deliberate. Through our exchange programme, a Butler can spend their leave nights at the other lodge; Mara staff go south to see Mount Kilimanjaro and the Super Tuskers, and Amboseli staff come north to a bigger, older operation.

You arrive and find your own Butler waiting; they served you last year in Amboseli, and here they are in the Mara.

Stephen Seki, who coordinates guest logistics down in Amboseli, came up to the Mara recently, and he put the difference better than I can from a single chair:

'Now I can brief a guest heading to the Mara on exactly what awaits them. But what struck me most was how differently the two lodges run. Here, the work is split into logistics, hosting, and beverages, each with its own role, and it feels streamlined. In Amboseli, one person carries the whole journey, from a guest's arrival to their last delight at night. That's exactly how we come to know our guests so well.'

The two lodges are the same family in different worlds. The average age at Amboseli is twenty-eight; here in the Mara, it is forty-four. Two very different sets of people, slowly being woven together, learning from each other, learning the other's property, carrying what they know across the miles between them.

Ibrahim, running Amboseli now, sees what it does to the work itself:

'When our people have worked both properties, they sell differently — you tell a better story about a place you've actually stood in. And the two teams stop being two teams. We share what works, we hold one standard of service, until the Mara and Amboseli feel like one lodge in two landscapes.'

That is the part I am proudest of. Not the buildings — the people. Angama has always been about giving someone a chance and seeing how far they will carry it. Eleven years in, the answer is: a very long way, and often somewhere none of us expected.