About the Founder

Margaret Masara has been a career nurse and care giver since 1973 having received her training from St. Claire Mission School, Kaplong. During her training years, access to medical facilities for the residents of Bomet was limited, and thus it was routine to visit patients in the neighbouring areas of Chepalungu, Litein and Longisa. This early foundation birthed in her a spirit of reaching out to communities to provide services. Her journey has seen her engage in numerous outreach programmes, community training and charitable activities. She retired from public service in 2001 to setup the Mawepi Centre.


During her years in training, she recalls her tutor Margaret Singleton teaching them on diseases such as diabetes, ulcers, hypertension, kidney and heart ailments, and cancer which were uncommon in the country and therefore practical examples and applications were a challenge but the same were the leading causes of death in the UK where Singleton originated. This, the tutor attributed to lifestyle choices, lack of fresh foods and use of preservatives in storage of foods. Further, Singleton also noted that most workers in her home country operated from offices denying them routine exercise leading to obesity and diabetes.

The Founder noticed that the same trends prevalent in the UK in the 1980s’ have become a mainstay in our present communities. Likewise, the global health community has also shifted focus from communicable diseases to non-communicable diseases as they have become leading killers internationally. Mrs Masara notes with distress that her own immediate family, both husband and son, have become victims of lifestyle diseases and so are many of her relatives.

Although retired, the founder acknowledges that the only recourse for lifestyle diseases is through education and counseling to ensure that people eat nutritious and well balanced meals, exercise routinely, don’t overwork, get enough rest and sleep and this has become her mission in life.

Take Home

• ·         Change people’s lifestyle choices through education and counseling
• ·         Improved outreach services to reach the masses especially the lower income vulnerable
• ·         Raise resources needed to diagnose, treat, educate and counsel about lifestyle diseases
• ·         Build a Centre that will be a referral and rehabilitation facility
• ·         The Centre will accommodate a maternity clinic to help Maasai women delivery safely in hygienic surrounding as opposed to in their manyatta’s.

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