Pretty Picture

Pretty Picture

As beautiful as the unwild can be.

Breakfast on the Ewaso Nyiro. About 10:30a. We left camp four hours ago and almost immediately saw two very young hyaena suckling.

I was anxious to find one of my all-time favorite birds, the golden-breasted starling, but dozens of regular and Grevy’s zebra, many giraffe, elephant, lots of impala and warthog along with a roster of exotic, colorful birds were sufficient substitutions.
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OnSafari: Endless

OnSafari: Endless

The unexpected night at Hemingway’s resort in Nairobi refreshed and rejuvenated everyone. I love Hemingway’s. I thought of Raffles in the Seychelles, an over-the-top property specifically marketed as a “fancy resort and spa.” I like Hemingway’s better.

The rooms are bigger, the bathroom is just aw large and gorgeous, the woodsy grounds with flowered landscaping a fine substitute for the Indian Ocean, and the dozens of chirping swifts, grunting colobus and melodic bulbuls more relaxing to me than the crashing waves on the beach.

Hemingway’s is where you go to rest up, not worry about which jewelry worn to dinner will perfectly reflect the candlelight. I ordered a hamburger.
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OnSafari: Gun Fire

OnSafari: Gun Fire

I haven’t delayed telling you. It’s just been an awfully busy time. Our two days in Samburu were cut short by automatic weapons and mortars. Everyone is fine, excited to keep going, we immediately returned to Nairobi and I’m infuriated that the Kenyans have wrapped this up. After one day of oblique reporting, the trouble in Samburu which we experienced first-hand is as if it had never happened.

That’s no way to boost tourism.
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OnSafari: Close Leopard

OnSafari: Close Leopard

For a million years the huge rock hill with steep sides stood undisturbed in the middle of the Great Northern Frontier, alone on 200,000 acres yet in the shadow of the sacred Samburu mountain, Ololokwe. Then, a camp was built on its top.

Just as the camp’s first customers arrived Ugali was born in one of the narrow caves pierced from the cliff side by the brief, slashing rains of April, several hundred feet below Tent 4.

The cliff side was perfect for her mother and herself. It was packed with hyrax for a light snack and baboon for something more substantial. There were also klipspringers, although their dexterity defied capture.

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OnSafari: Rare & Beautiful

OnSafari: Rare & Beautiful

SamburuGD.Mar18.218Grevy’s and twigas and giant hogs, oh my! We got almost all of them! The point of the Kenyan extension to a big game safari in Tanzania is to see all the unusual and rare game not found in Tanzania.

The Aberdare National Park is a highland rainforest. There are several in Tanzania, but none as large and none that still have the rare game we saw there. In Samburu, a remarkable ecosystem at the very edge of the great desert, dozens of animals and birds are found nowhere else.

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OnSafari: Beauty & Guilt

OnSafari: Beauty & Guilt

SaruniSamburuWe are in a “safari camp” called Saruni in Kenya. It’s the only “camp” in the Kalama Reserve, 220,000 extremely wild acres that sit just on top of Samburu National Reserve. I’m hard pressed to think of a more beautiful place for tourists to stay in all of East Africa.

Later today and tonight we begin our game viewing, but arriving just for lunch it was universally decided to just “hang out” for the rest of the afternoon. You can imagine why.

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Now a Grim Tale

Now a Grim Tale

viewfrom.saruni.518.jun10‘Laikipia’ runs off the tongue into conversation exactly like the beautiful waterfalls that burst out of the high jungles over the dramatic cactus landscapes of deep canyons and endless vistas in north central Kenya.

Laikipia was a beautiful story in the 1970s, still compelling two decades later in “I Dream of Africa,” but it’s a grim and dark tale, now.

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OnSafari: Resplendently!

OnSafari: Resplendently!

GrevysRare and beautiful. That’s Samburu.

I’m finishing this blog atop a jutting mountain overlooking at least 500 square miles of the Great Northern Frontier. It would be easy to think I was overlooking a secret little national park in Utah or Arizona. But there are no airplane or car sounds, only the sounds of the crested francolin announcing the sunrise, and the very distant groans of lion returning from an evening’s hunt.
goldenbreasted.hume
Several times during our three days here I saw my favorite bird: the golden breasted starling. The bird field guide calls it “resplendent, wild, restless and unapproachable.” That’s Samburu. That’s where we are now.

There are five unique life forms in Samburu and today we found them all!

The reticulated giraffe, the blue-legged Somali ostrich, the gerenuk, the Grevy’s zebra and the oryx. The oryx and gerenuk can be found, rarely, in other southern parks, but the other three are wholly endemic to this area.

And by the way, we also had a wonderful experience with two leopards!

I can’t help but thinking that our enormous success game viewing here has to do with how few tourists there are. Not too many years ago we would have had 30 cars around the leopard. Today, we were two of five.

The rest of the special animal attractions we found all by ourselves, with none others to share even if we wanted to.

Kenyan tourism remains sorely depressed. Many lodges are at the brink of bankruptcy. Special unimaginable deals are now available for last-minute bookers.

At the same time this group has such a remarkably positive attitude and is untiringly persistent. We’d not found the ostrich or zebra after a long but wonderful six hour early morning game drive. So after our brunch set up in a grove of doum palms was over, the plan was to return to camp.

Not this group! On we went and within a half hour we’d found the ostrich and another half hour we’d found Samburu’s greatest prize of all, the very endangered Grevy’s zebra.

Samburu’s unique big game is because of its geographical isolation in the near desert environment of the Great Northern Frontier. Once this area was as lush and rainy as those not too far north, and when that changed thousands of years ago, the animals that were captured here by a changing geography speciated.

They need less water and they regulate heat much better than their distant cousins to the south. And for many of us, they’re more beautiful!

The reticulated giraffe’s distinct markers present a major contrast with its pure white background. The ostrich has deep blue, rather than red legs during breeding.

A quarter way through my marathon 40th Anniversary of Guiding Safaris-safari, we prepare now to leave this magical place for still another of my favorites, the Maasai Mara. Stay tuned!
SaruniLodge

OnSafari: Great Northern Frontier

OnSafari: Great Northern Frontier

Villa 6 (right bottom) one thousand feet above Northern Frontier.
Villa 6 (right bottom) one thousand feet above Northern Frontier.
Jutting mountains, horizons to the end of the earth, really rare and beautiful game and lodging at one of the most luxurious, remote lodges on earth. That’s Samburu Saruni.

In two days we’ve seen reticulated giraffe, gerenuk, elephant, lion, a leopard kill (without the leopard, we were just minutes late) and are enjoying some of the most expansive vistas Africa can provide.
vulturine
After yesterday’s wonderful drive around Mt. Kenya (which hasn’t once seemed to disappear from the skyline) we pulled past Isiolo and even Archer’s Post and continued on the desolate desert road north.

But not for long. Within a half hour we’d turned into the private Kalama Conservancy, a community based reserve that adjoins Samburu National Park. Eight villas are built on a steep mountain about a thousand feet above the mojave like desert of this incredible Northern Frontier.

Our first game drive within the conservancy found elephant and the reticulated giraffe, found only in these northern areas. It’s a beautiful, more colorful giraffe than the common one found most everywhere else, with additional horns and darker, very articulated markings.

Caroline Barrett photographing elephant.
Caroline Barrett photographing elephant.

Gerenuk were everywhere. That’s the weird long-necked antelope with an ET-head and giant ears.

Last night we went to bed under a starlit sky with a full moon that laid on the enormous landscape like a silk veil. Hyaena swooned and nightjars piped all night long. In the morning genet cats joined us in our individual villas to share the chocolate cookies of early morning tea.

Then this morning we left at 6 a.m. in the dark but with the full moon still radiant above, Jupiter just below it, Mars and Venus also visible. We encountered many elephant and giraffe as we entered Samburu National Park.

We set up breakfast on the river shore and watched two lionesses on the opposite bank, obviously irritated with an unsuccessful night of hunting. Honey badger tracks were all over our sandy knoll.

Under the towering doum palms at riverside we increased our bird sightings to the highest level I’ve ever achieved on a safari of this length so far: just under 400 species. Today we added the palm nut vulture, rosy-patched shrike, magpie starling and white-headed mousebird among many others. We saw lots more of the remarkable vulturine guinea fowl.

But the most amazing bird sighting of all was our own North American Northern Wheatear, a small thrush like bird that makes the longest migration on earth, even greater than the arctic tern. Some of the birds migrate 30000 km per year, from North America via Asia to here in Samburu. Their migration is so long that they spend more time migrating than in either their breeding or wintering grounds.

There are many luxury lodges in Kenya, but few this remote. It’s an outstanding place with incredible rooms, outstanding food and drink and a remarkable staff.

I am singularly impressed, in fact, with the Samburu staff. Their knowledge of the area is unmatched, of course, but who would have suspected the guides would know the Latin names of birds?

I was astounded to learn that all of them had rarely left this place, and that their entire education was from government schools in the area. Frankly, I think several of them would be better managers than the white faces that owners feel compelled to provide as a welcome.

The current South African couple (actually a Californian who married a South African) is incredibly nice, but they don’t know the language or Kenya. They’ve been here for less than a month having come from a presumably successful stint running a dive resort in Malaysia.

So I hold nothing against this wonderful couple. But it’s time Kenyan lodge owners understand that Kenyans, not wazungu, should manage their properties.

Kakkie Cunningham, Brian Barrett, Steve Farrand, Caroline Barrett, Shirley Gangwere and Jim Pease toasting Samburu!
Kakkie Cunningham, Brian Barrett, Steve Farrand, Caroline Barrett, Shirley Gangwere and Jim Pease toasting Samburu!

Lion Futures

Lion Futures

EwasoLionsTeam2015A ranger’s report filed yesterday from northern Kenya explains so perfectly why lions in the wild may quickly becoming a thing of the past.

Ewaso Lions is a stellar NGO working in the Laikipia/Samburu region of northern Kenya, a beautiful semi-arid terrain just north of Mt. Kenya. The small under 25-person group is run by a 4th generation Kenyan Asian, Shivani Bhalla, whose list of prizes from conservation organizations takes up a dozen lines of her resume.

More than half the staff is composed of local mostly Samburu. Jeneria Lekilelei, the Field Operations and Community Manager, won last year’s Conservation and Field Hero Award from the Walt Disney Foundation.

Jeneria’s field report explains that lion/human conflict in his region increases with the onset of the rains. During the dry season lions have a relatively easy time picking off wild game that must necessarily congregate at certain water sources.

With the rains wild game disperses. So does domestic stock: out of their bins where they’re fed hay during the dry season, they seek the same natural pastures that the wild game seeks.

Jeneria recounts one morning when “the lions killed camels in 5 locations so I was getting calls from all over. I raced to one area where Lengwe and his pride killed a camel and its baby…

“Three warriors from the village came and they all had guns. I was sure Lengwe was going to be killed by these warriors, so I sat with them under a bush all day” and talked them out of the killing.

There are several critical back stories to this positive tale.

The first is pretty evident: “I was getting calls from all over.” These weren’t warrior’s whoops, they were cell phone calls. Even the most remote wildernesses on earth are peppered with cell towers and there are generally more mobile phones per person in the developing world than in America.

Cell phones represent increasing connections of everything, including government and people. Killing a lion in Kenya is a crime.

The second back story is of Lengwe the lion. Lengwe would be a goner in the truly wild world of times past. Jeneria first encountered Lengwe when he was nearly dead, incapacitated by a broken femur. Ewaso Lions mobilized a remarkable rescue operation that included not only rounding up vets and federal wildlife rangers to immobilize Lengwe, but even of transporting an X-ray machine into the area for a correct diagnosis.

Lengwe was not exactly nursed back to health, but he was certainly monitored carefully and eventually he became a pride leader. Losing Lengwe to three young warriors would have been a rather sorry end to an otherwise heroic tale.

Finally the third back story was the rationale that Jeneria used to dissuade the warriors from their revenge killing: Where were the kids?

Stock – whether camels or cows or goats – is traditionally the responsibility of young boy herders. As Jeneria recounts asking the warriors, “Have you ever heard of a camel being killed when herded by a proper person?”

The question shamed the warriors. The implied answer is also quite illustrative: lions won’t go anywhere near Samburu or Maasai herding stock and this particular stock was being neglected. Not tending stock doesn’t just remove protection, it essentially cedes ownership.

Because of the good work of Ewaso Lions, the great Northern Frontier’s predator is faring better than it would otherwise. Because of cell phones, Maasai boys herding stock are going to become increasingly delinquent so that they can pass their CPAs.

This wonderful story with wonderful, positive characters ended beautifully, but its lesson is proof things will not go well as currently arranged. Climate change and human progress might be at odds in some places, but in this case they are working hand-in-hand to wreck havoc on this traditional tapestry of life.

Guns & Climate

Guns & Climate

samburugunsMore guns make more war and less guns make less war and the truth is shown clearly today in Kenya’s Samburu district.

Since the incredible arming of Kenya by the Obama administration for the Somali Invasion four years ago, the number of weapons in northern Kenya has increased by a ridiculous amount. It’s particularly noticeable now that the war is winding down.

Guns don’t wind down.

So all the tens of thousands of unused machine guns and grenades have reached the black market and they’re available for a song.

The Samburu district of Kenya has always had a sort of wild west flavor, including messy cowboy entanglements. For one thing it’s where two historically antagonistic tribes, the Turkana and Samburu, meet.

Both tribes hold creation myths stating that God created cows only for them, so if the other tribe has cows, they must have stolen them. The young warrior class is charged with recovering as much of these stolen goods as possible.

So cattle rustling has existed at least for as long as anyone has written about the area, well back to the 16th and 17th centuries. It’s different, now.

To begin with, there’s more competition. There are more people, so more food and more cows are needed at the same time that climate change is exacerbating the desertification of these northern areas.

So while it used to be pretty much an ethnic conflict between two or three major tribes, today the issue of enough land for grazing is just as important.

The Kenyan government is moving perhaps too quickly to ameliorate this by generating new local revenue from deep-hole oil wells financed by the Chinese.

But the most important difference is how people fight.

Instead of using spears and clubs, the fights are now almost exclusively with very sophisticated guns.

Guess where they might come from? Amazing, isn’t it, that they cost less than fashioning a good spear?

In the most recent cases it appears the warring factions are better armed than the police.

Kenya has a strict firearm policy: it’s not easy as a private citizen to own a gun. But in the Samburu district of Kenya it’s hard to find a Samburu without a gun.

In an attempt to reduce the weaponry, Samburu authorities announced an amnesty several weeks ago for anyone who turned in an illegal firearm. That program expired Tuesday and “no firearms had been surrendered.”

It is, of course, a common argument promoted by arms manufacturers that peace prospers when more people have guns. This presumes that the vast majority of people are good and only use guns to defend themselves.

That argument is about as cogent as the idea that God created all cows for Samburu.

OnVacation: Best Photos

OnVacation: Best Photos

9Jul.dancers_ostrich.samburuI’m on vacation until July 23 when I guide my last safari of the year in Tanzania; please come back then! Meanwhile, I’m posting some of my favorite photos taken on my safaris over the last 39 years. Scenes like the one above don’t really happen, anymore. This was taken nearly 30 years ago near Archer’s Post in Samburu, Kenya. Many of the people in this area, today, remain poor compared to the rest of modern Kenya, and many will still adorn a few beads and bracelets over tattered dresses and old gym shorts, but except for some “living museums” or lodge staff dressed up in traditional regalia, this is a picture of many years ago.