Jason Houston is picture editor for Orion magazine and a freelance documentary photographer. This is his third trip photographing the Rare Pride program, its activists, and the related conservation issues inspiring these campaigns.  For the next three weeks he will be in eastern Africa in Kenya and the Seychelles visiting two separate sites and sharing his experiences on this blog. 

My first and only other trip to Africa was in 2002 when I traveled to South Africa to photograph in the townships and informal settlements around Johannesburg. Like literally everyone I’ve met who’s traveled to this continent, I quickly fell in love, and I have long anticipated a chance to return. It’s hard to articulate exactly its appeal. It’s no one thing. It’s a paradigm and approach. An attitude and a simplicity of living in the present in the context of a history as old as our species. There’s a perseverance towards something fundamental that thrives in spite of the often bleak, nearly hopeless future so many of its people seem to face. We in the west are conditioned to feel sympathy, but I saw a raw humanity one can only admire. If you’ve been to Africa, you might know what I mean. If not, I don’t pretend my images will bring you there—they’re but one interpretation—but perhaps they will begin to share my perspective through some stories of some of it’s people and their work to save a place where they live.

Travel this time is to Kenya and our project site among the rural villages and wild areas at the southeastern edge of the Samburu District in the Rift Valley Provence, barely a degree north of the equator. I arrive in Nairobi, one of Kenya’s largest cities (and its capital), after 18 hours of travel for a layover day before we head north into the bush. Nairobi is a large sprawling city with a reputation as one of the most dangerous cities in Africa (an honor, incidentally, shared also with Johannesburg). I’m sure bad things happen here, however, as was my experience in Johannesburg, I am immediately struck by the fact that the way we come to know Africa—the way we’re made to think of Africa through the mainstream media and stereotypical entertainment—is far from a fair representation of what Africa really is.

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A view of the African landscape from the plane.

Kenya is in the bottom several percent of the world’s economies, and in poor countries like this the poorest and most desperate often head towards the cities. Nairobi, again like Johannesburg, is one of these destinations. There are large and ever multiplying slums, areas of old tin and scrap wood sided shacks where AIDS, TB, crime, and other afflictions are all too common. But this time I have not come to photograph urban poverty or the socioeconomic struggles of those left behind in the ‘developing world’ as our global economy develops on. For the next 10 days I will be visiting with Titus Letaapo, a Rare Pride campaign leader, his project’s partner organizations, and the communities in and around the 100,000 hectares in central Kenya where he works.

This campaign site, the Namunyak Wildlife Conservation Trust and surrounding areas, was chosen for its diversity of wild flora and fauna including endangered and threatened animal species such as the African Wild Dog, Grevy Zebra, Pancake Tortoise, Somali Ostrich, Beisa Oryx, Gerenuk, Reticulated Giraffe, buffalo, African Elephant, a variety of species of the cat family including lions, cheetah, caracals and leopards and the threatened Greater Kudu, which is the flagship species for Titus’s Pride Campaign. Also important in this diverse ecosystem (the region ranges from the low-lying Sarara valley and shrubby acacia woodlands to evergreen forests rising to nearly 2,700m/9,000′ ) are significant and unique plant species including cycads, cedar, podos, crotons, and a variety of aloe species and seasonal wild flowers. Threats to the well-being and sustainability of this region’s plant, animal, and human inhabitants include issues involving grazing and agriculture, population growth, human caused wildfire, poaching for animal products and as a result of human/livestock/wildlife conflict, and a general lack of awareness of the value of the wildlife and/or more sustainable alternatives.

Tomorrow we head north by small plane to Wamba, our home base for most of the time while at the project site. While I will continue producing my daily posts, uncertain internet access may prevent me from getting them online immediately.

Related posts:

1. Spreading Rare Pride in Africa Adam Murray, assistant course manager for the Rare Pride training...