Mchenja

Mchenja camp presents five charming, tented suites, consisting of 4 double or twin configuration rooms and a two-bedroom, two-bathroom family suite. The rooms encompass a pure, natural elegance with grass walls, soft cushions, and light-as-air curtains. Each room boasts a feather-top bed, large picture windows and open air en-suite bathroom with a bathtub looking out onto the mesmerising river. From the comfort of their own room, guests can listen to bellowing hippos or watch as elephants feed just outside. The suites offer a safari haven bringing you one step closer to the African wilderness.

Amid the wild bush setting, the award-winning culinary team creates an extraordinary dining experience that blends expert culinary skills, impeccable service and artful plating. The dishes draw from the rich cultural and natural heritage of Zambia by featuring the vibrant flavours, produce and traditions. By bringing together the best of Zambia with inspiration from around the world, Mchenja creates a dining experience that appeals to guests from around the globe, while retaining its wonderful Zambian authenticity.

At the end of a lively day, enjoy a sundowner – a cherished African tradition. Whether you prefer a crisp gin and tonic or a local beer, the excellent bar staff have got you covered.

Explore two of Zambia’s premier wildlife destinations, offering a diverse array of activities. Guests will have the chance to get close and personal with the wildlife along Zambia’s mighty rivers. The Luangwa and Zambezi rivers course through two of Zambia’s renowned national parks. An unspoiled wilderness, South Luangwa National Park is known as the Valley of the Leopard. This is where one of the company founders, the legendary Norman Carr, pioneered walking safaris.

With endemic giraffe and wildebeest, and endangered wild dogs, the game viewing here is second to none. The landscape of the Lower Zambezi National Park is entirely different. Its lush channels and ancient forests are a haven for elephants, predators and birdlife. It presents the greatest variety of activities in Zambia, from game drives to canoeing, boat cruises, walking safaris and tiger fishing. Discover the natural beauty of both parks with award-winning guides on the most popular itinerary in Zambia.

The Jetset Safari is the ultimate travel experience, combining a wildly luxurious safari with an exquisite beach resort on the Indian Ocean. The beautiful collection of Time + Tide camps, including Mchenja, offer world class luxury set against Africa’s rare and unexplored landscapes. With award winning guides and old-fashioned hospitality, guests will encounter a wonderfully relaxing experience that is guaranteed to exceed their expectations. From outstanding predator action and the annual wildebeest migration to vibrant coral reefs and large pods of spinner dolphins, Time + Tide Mchenja camp brings the best of Africa’s magnificent wildlife to you.

Reconnect with nature in an authentic way. For the ultimate safari experience, return to the wild with Mchenja’s signature Sleepout Under the Stars. This extraordinary experience is an adventurous addition to any safari, allowing guests to reconnect with nature and each other in a simple, meaningful way.

Just like the early explorers, you fall asleep under a canopy of a million twinkling stars, listening to the whispers of the night-time bush. A cosy bedroll, bush loo and culinary team ensure that this experience is as comfortable as it is memorable. Mchenja’s destination offers a unique experience that celebrates the region’s beauty.

The Time + Tide Foundation (TTF) creates social value in the Time + Tide communities. As the philanthropic arm of the Time + Tide tourism brand, the Foundation invests in the future productivity of African economies through community and school-based learning. The TTF focuses on five main pillars: female empowerment, health, home-based education, student sponsorship and wildlife conservation.

For girls who grow up in rural Africa, poor school attendance during their teenage years correlates with advanced sexual initiation, earlier marriage and childbearing, higher rates of STDs including HIV and AIDS, and greater risk of domestic violence. As adolescent girls quickly transition from childhood to motherhood, these women are less likely to value learning, to be aware of the returns of schooling and to ultimately ensure that their children receive an education when they grow up, making it more challenging for them to break the endless cycle of poverty.

The TTF’s Female Empowerment initiatives inspire primary school girls from some of the most isolated communities in Madagascar and Zambia to believe in their self-worth. The aim is to increase the number of primary school girls who successfully transition to, and complete, secondary school. Specifically, the current programme objective is to see 70% of female beneficiaries achieve high enough exam scores to advance to quality boarding schools. These schools have better resources than local government day schools and also provide a truly academic environment and shelter girls from the domestic expectations of their homes and communities.

In order to do this, the TTF holds weekly clubs with over 180 girls across 9 schools and focuses their activities on building self-esteem, literacy skills and overall academic performance. In 2021, the Female Empowerment Policy was revised to include a three-year commitment from girls, enrolling them in grade 5 only. They are also more closely involving parents in the programme by forming parent committees and sharing curriculum content so they become more aware and engaged with their daughters’ academic and social learnings. The primary beneficiaries of this programme are, naturally, the girls themselves; however, the TTF also holds meetings and workshops with 1,100 teachers and parents on the future earning potential of educated women. Moreover, they host community and school-wide activities, through which they indirectly engage 3,500 students and residents on girls’ rights and the importance of female education.

In Zambia and Madagascar, the 2019 Human Development Report stated that respectively 63% and 44% of births are attended by skilled health personnel. The maternal mortality ratios are 224 and 353 deaths per 100,000 live births. Only 26% of the population in Zambia and a mere 11% in Madagascar have access to basic sanitation facilities.

While the TTF is primarily focussed on education, they also look to provide medical treatment for children who require hospitalisation and consultations with specialists. So far, they have financed surgeries for 14 children with conditions such as bowed legs, cleft lips, life-threatening injuries, and routine shunt replacements. Furthermore, they ensure that children in the home-based education programme receive the medication, food and nutrition they require, offering them an alternative healing therapy called Body Stress Release.

In Madagascar, TTF employs a part-time medical doctor and three full-time nurses to service 20 villages in the Loky-Manambato Protected Area, a few of which are over 45km from the nearest clinic. As a result, 2,800 residents of these villages now have access to reliable medical care in the comfort of their own homes, and an additional 6,000 residents from neighbouring communities need only travel a few kilometres to consult qualified healthcare professionals.

In 2020, the doctor devoted over 500 hours of his time to share Covid-19 preventive measures with residents, simultaneously distributing over 400 reusable masks.

The prevalence of disabilities in children aged 0 – 14 years in sub-Saharan Africa is unknown, with published estimates saying it could be anywhere from 6% to over 20%. What’s more, 90-98% of children with special needs are estimated to be out of school. The result is an incredibly low literacy rate (only 3% of adults with special needs in Sub-Saharan Africa are literate) and severely limited professional opportunities in adulthood.

Children with special needs deserve to share access to the same opportunities, including the chance to attend formal school and learn in inclusive environments. Through the Home-Based Education Programme, the TTF provides individualised education plans for children and their families, with the objective of seeing 75% of these children enrol in primary schools. These plans are delivered firstly in children’s homes, in partnership with their parents, by community caregivers who have received extensive training on the biological, psychological and social challenges faced by children with special needs.

In 2021, a total of 172 children are registered in the home-based education programme, with 60% of children enrolled in formal primary schools. By comparison, only 10% of children were enrolled in school when the programme was piloted in 2016. Significant strides have been accomplished over the last few years, with 16 teachers’ assistants now fully trained and deployed to primary schools to implement inclusive education, and several income-generating projects developed for the benefit of the community caregivers. The programme currently focuses primarily on the 172 children with special needs; however, their activities also directly benefit 1,400 community caregivers, parents and teachers across the area.

A recent report published in Zambia cited that 79% of families with children with special needs unfortunately suffered substantial income loss over 2020, resulting in food insecurity. To assist residents in these areas, many of whom rely on tourism for their livelihoods, the TTF distributed three months’ worth of food hampers to every family on the programme and the volunteer caregivers. In total, 693 hampers were given out, consisting of staple foods, fresh produce, protein, and basic household goods, which benefited over 5,500 residents.

In sub-Saharan Africa, 40% of children are not in school. Of the children who do enter into and remain in school through grade 12, less than 33% can demonstrate an understanding of their course material. Consequently, the majority of students enter the labour market with sub-standard literacy and numeracy skills, hindering their ability to find good, well-paid jobs.

The student sponsorship programme by the TTF strives to eliminate barriers to schooling for students with high academic potential, who would otherwise not be able to afford quality education. Once accepted into the programme, the TTF will then prioritise enrolment, retention and completion of secondary school at well-reputed boarding schools where the educational resources are far better and more numerous than those found at government day schools. Thereafter, the aim is to see 85% of sponsored students retained through secondary school and 50% qualify for government bursaries to attend university.

In 2021, 60 students are sponsored in secondary school and college, 75% of whom attend some of the best boarding schools in their respective provinces. As a result of the investment in their children’s education, 120 parents directly benefit from the sponsorship programme too, with an additional 1,700 residents positively impacted through their relationship to sponsored students and through delivery of goods and services.

Together with Time + Tide, the Time + Tide Foundation is committed to protecting the threatened wildlife and habitats in their areas of business. In Zambia, they support local conservation management organisations in their anti-poaching, environmental education, human-wildlife conflict, and wildlife rehabilitation efforts. In 2019 alone, Time + Tide donated USD $160,000 to these efforts and contributed over $500,000 to the national parks authorities via fees, levies and taxes.

In Madagascar, Time + Tide are uniquely positioned on a protected island, with a full-time environmental team trained in wildlife monitoring and reforestation. They therefore have the opportunity to take a more hands-on approach to conservation, which has involved the monitoring of nesting sea turtles on Nosy Ankao, marine and terrestrial biodiversity surveys, seabird ringing and monitoring, plus a Crowned Lemur Conservation programme.

Ultimately, the success of wildlife conservation depends on the number of people who would gain more financially from protecting animals and their habitats than they would from harvesting them. Through the TTF’s coral reef research, education of fishing associations, reforestation efforts, well installations, and ranger and student training and employment, 1,300 residents in the Loky-Manambato Protected Area directly benefit from these efforts, with a further 5,500 residents receiving secondary or indirect benefits from procurement, job opportunities and the potential for conservation-focused income generating projects.