Hartley: road and operations
Vehicles, supplies, guiding, routes and the practical problems that came with running safaris far from town.
Eastco Community
EASTCO AND THE MAASAI STEPPE
A relationship that began before the safaris
Hartley and Julie first came to Lolkisale because of farming. The relationships that grew there later became part of EASTCO.
BEFORE EASTCO
They came for the farm, not tourism.
Around 1990, Hartley was offered work managing one of the large seed farms at Lolkisale. He and Julie were newly married, David was on the way and the job came when they needed it.
Hartley had trained as a teacher, but much of his working life was in farming. At Lolkisale he managed staff, machinery, roads and crops. That placed him in regular contact with the village, where questions about water, access and land were part of everyday life rather than distant conservation ideas.
Julie is Mwarusha, from the Arusha community within the wider Maasai cultural world. She went with Hartley to Lolkisale and was part of those early relationships. Language, family connections and a genuine understanding of local life mattered, especially at a time when a mixed Tanzanian and Australian family was far less ordinary than it is today.
The first work was practical. Hartley’s records describe helping to build a village police station, supplying cement blocks and discussing a water line that would reduce the long walk made by women collecting water. Those relationships existed before EASTCO began operating safaris and camps.
Our approach: we are careful not to turn another community’s life into a safari attraction. When a journey includes time beyond the park gates, it should be arranged with respect and a clear local purpose.
THE EARLY SAFARI YEARS
How the work was divided.
David remembers the early years as a family operation in the most literal sense. There was no neat line between the office, the road and the camp.
Hartley did much of the operations work, organised vehicles and supplies, guided or accompanied trips and dealt with whatever went wrong along the way. Julie made the camps work. She planned and cooked meals, worked with the camp staff and looked after clients once they came in from the day.
Julie: camp and clients
Food, cooking, camp routines and the patient work of making people feel looked after in the bush.
FROM THE EASTCO ARCHIVE
Meetings and work in Lolkisale.
These modest old photographs show the people and places behind the family’s account.
WHY THE LAND MATTERED
Tarangire does not end at the park gate.
Wildlife moves across a much larger landscape. The grasslands east of Tarangire National Park have long been important grazing country for pastoral Maasai communities and part of the wider seasonal range used by elephants, buffalo and other wildlife.
The problem was never simply that people farmed. Families needed crops, livestock and somewhere to live. The concern was the rapid spread of permanent and sometimes large-scale cultivation across shared grazing and wildlife dispersal land. It narrowed the routes available to animals and the dry-season options available to livestock.
The early conservation discussions at Lolkisale were an attempt to leave room for all of those needs and to return tourism income to village priorities. They were complicated negotiations about land, livelihoods and wildlife—not a simple story of tourism arriving to save a place.
Read our guide to Tarangire National Park →A LONG ASSOCIATION
What followed the first police station
Life at Lolkisale
Farm work brought Hartley and Julie to the village. Roads, water and the police station made the relationship practical from the start.
Naitolia and the early camps
Village meetings at Naitolia led to a camp on village land, while Hartley, Julie and the early team learnt the work by doing it.
Lolkisale priorities
Council meetings and conservation income supported local work including the village clinic.
A wider landscape
Eight villages now form Randilen WMA, a later and broader community conservation area east of Tarangire.
WHAT THIS TAUGHT US
Conservation has to work for the people living there.
Wildlife protection cannot be separated from everyday life. If families are expected to keep land open for wildlife, there must be a practical benefit locally. That sounds obvious now; it was far from standard thinking when the early work around Lolkisale began.
The projects and arrangements have changed over time, as they do. EASTCO does not claim to own this history or to speak for the communities involved. What we can speak about is the part our family and company played, and what those years taught us about travelling responsibly in northern Tanzania.
Listen first
Local priorities matter more than an operator’s preferred story.
Keep it practical
Water, education and health leave a clearer legacy than slogans.
Stay for the long term
Trust is built through years of showing up, not one-off visits.
LOLKISALE, NAITOLIA AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS
One part of a larger living landscape.
Lolkisale and Naitolia were never islands. The people, livestock and wildlife of the Maasai Steppe move through a landscape that crosses village and park boundaries.
Naitolia has its own place in EASTCO’s history. Hartley’s account remembers early meetings with village leaders and the beginnings of a camp on village land in the mid-1990s. It became a base for safaris, walking and long days learning the country east of Tarangire.
The wider area has since developed through different village agreements and conservation structures. Today the Randilen Wildlife Management Area covers about 312 square kilometres and brings together eight villages: Lolkisale, Naitolia, Lemooti, Lengolwa, Mswakini, Mswakini Juu, Nafco and Oldonyo.
Randilen came later and is not presented here as EASTCO’s project. It does, however, show how closely connected these villages remain within Tarangire’s wider wildlife dispersal area. The names on a map are separate; the water, grazing routes and wildlife movement are not.
YOUR SAFARI, YOUR DATES
See Tarangire as part of a larger story.
Tell us when you are travelling and what interests you. A member of our safari team will reply within 24 hours with practical next steps.