Earth in Our Hands: Inside the Design of Zamara Private

"Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!"

I had not thought about that line in years until I found myself inside the Sphere in Las Vegas, watching "The Wizard of Oz" unfold in a way I can only describe as disorienting, fake tornado winds swirling paper leaves overhead, apples raining down, winged monkeys sweeping past. I was there for a press trip tied to the IMMLUX conference, there for the spectacle rather than the story. I have never much liked the film itself. But that line stuck with me anyway, the way certain phrases do. Lions, tigers and bears do not actually share a habitat anywhere in the wild. Lions live almost entirely in sub-Saharan Africa, with one small protected population of Asiatic lions in India. Tigers are found only in Asia. Bears range across North America, Europe and Asia, occasionally overlapping with tigers, but never with lions. Dorothy's line is pure Hollywood invention, not zoogeography.

Still, it is the phrase most people reach for when they picture a safari, myself included. That gap between imagination and reality is part of what made a recent conversation with Dereck Joubert, co-founder of Great Plains Conservation, so interesting to have.

Joubert didn't set out to build a resort. He set out to answer a question guests kept asking him, unprompted, around the fire at Great Plains' other properties. "It was really born out of many conversations with guests," he said. "I always ask questions about what they most desire and how we can provide it. It's a recurring theme: more privacy." That recurring answer became Zamara Private, a six-suite residence on the edge of Kenya's Maasai Mara Reserve, built for one group at a time rather than the shared-common-area model most safari camps rely on. "This is their home, not a camp," Joubert said. The property includes a private wine cellar, a media room so younger guests can "escape and not be on top of adults," and a private office for anyone who needs to take a Zoom call or check the markets away from the family. Wellness spaces are deliberately split: the gym, spa, and saunas positioned so families can use them together, and a meditation room set apart on the other side of camp, built for quiet and stillness. "It's for people who want to move in and make it their own," Joubert said, "without actually buying a home in Africa."

The land itself did much of the talking during the design process. Joubert described a methodical, almost obsessive attention to site: studying where the light fell at sunrise and sunset, sleeping on scaffolding on-site to check it himself, consulting Vastu design principles and local building traditions, mapping water flow and potential noise pollution. His original sketch for the property was simple: a pair of open hands holding a sphere, the familiar "earth in our hands" image. The buildings followed that shape unless the landscape demanded otherwise. "For me, all design is a concept that works with the form that nature provides," he said. "You can stick rigidly to the design on paper and fight the landscape, but that conflict eventually seeps into the buildings and just feels awkward." Even a beautifully designed lodge, he noted, can still be "a terrible blot on the landscape" if it isn't handled with care, so Great Plains disguises Zamara within heavy tree growth, running on solar power, borehole water, and rainwater collection, embedding the property into the land rather than placing it on top of it.

That same instinct toward balance shapes how guests actually spend their time. Zamara pairs serious wellness infrastructure, a private spa, gym, sauna and a 15-by-5-meter infinity pool, with proximity to some of the most active wildlife viewing in Africa, and Joubert doesn't see those as competing demands. "It is not all about chasing down the migration," he said. "It's about peeling back a new layer of understanding of the place." Most safari camps offer only three modes: out on a vehicle, walking, or alone in a bedroom. Zamara was built to offer something in between. "Let's face it," Joubert said, "even in the best of company we all need a moment to be alone."

Food carries the same philosophy. Meals come from a team of executive chefs working in an open kitchen, built around a plant-based baseline, with meat, fish and poultry offered as the option rather than the default. "It is designed around the way Beverly and I eat," Joubert said, "so our chefs are expert at this." The goal isn't indulgence for its own sake. "The last thing we want is for our guests to leave and say the food was so good we put on ten pounds," he said. "Instead we strive for a comment like, the food was so good we feel fit, relaxed, and healthy."

Zamara's conservation and community programming draws on nearly two decades of Great Plains Foundation work, including 15 years specifically in this ecosystem, which Joubert credits for keeping the guest experience genuine rather than staged. Guests can visit a Great Plains Bridge project, spend time at a partner school, or plant an indigenous tree through the foundation's Conservation Roots program. A local Maasai women's group focused on beadwork and honey farming is one example of how that relationship works in practice: Great Plains funds the group as a business first, buying their product directly, so there's no pressure on either side when guests visit. "That moment is all about getting to understand the local culture and engage without that pressure," Joubert said. The partnership itself was built the same way. "Before we even invested with this particular group, we consulted to find out what they wanted," he said. "We don't drop in and decide. We ask. Magically, once you ask, a whole new world opens up and that exchange happens."

For guests who want the classic safari image, Zamara still delivers it: a hot air balloon ride over the Mara at sunrise, drifting above lions mid-hunt, herds of elephant and buffalo moving through terrain far from any road. Joubert described it simply as "peace, tranquility and excitement."

Asked how he defines luxury, Joubert didn't reach for the pool or the wine cellar. "Luxury is all about time and space," he said. "Having the time to be with family or friends for laughter, shared experiences without the clutter of civilization. Time is the one thing none of us have quite enough of, and there is little we can do about it, except spend it wisely, joyously, in the way we choose." At Zamara, he said, the property provides the opportunity and the space. The rest is up to the guest. "You bring the happiness."

Zamara Private, by Great Plains Conservation, is a six-suite private safari villa on the edge of the Maasai Mara Reserve, opened July 2026. Nightly rates start from $32,500, based on 12 guests sharing, all-inclusive. greatplainsconservation.com/zamara-private