Jason Houston’s 2nd post from Africa as he enters Kenya– the site of Titus Letaapo’s Pride campaign.

Today was another travel day. As with many of the locations Rare works, the project site is remote. In this case, after getting to Kenya, it’s a half-day’s drive or a little over an hours flight on a small plane straight out into central Kenya. While driving is my personally preferred method for travel like this, maximizing our time on-site is our first priority and so we fly.

Flying gives a different sense of transition. While walking or driving or using other human scale modes provide for a gradual blending of where you’ve been with where you’re going, flying shows you the big picture. In this case, we rose up out of dirty, urban Nairobi, over a maze of factory-like buildings, warehouses, pit mines, and scrapyards scattered among the neighborhoods, shopping areas, and business districts. The landscape quickly transitioned through the suburbs to a rural agricultural patchwork of small fields—a quilted landscape of varying levels of productivity. This order slowly gave way to the more natural patterns the result of seasonal rains, veins of dry washes connected by a mixture of human and animal tracks, and as it did I finally felt like I was entering that literary Africa all we who have never seen it before dream it might be like. I say finally, but within literally less than an hour’s time from snaking through the traffic of Nairobi’s city center, I’d made it to the bush and already seen giraffe, buffalo, and elephant. The trip ended abruptly, literally, as the small plane sped to a stop on a narrow, short dirt runway cleared between acacias and the brush.

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Preparing to head out on safari.   

My luggage on the other hand, had not made it. Somehow, while boarding the 9 people on our plane, my bag went in the opposite direction to the Maasai Mara with another similarly sized group. I found myself on safari in the famously remote Samburu park with only my camera gear (luckily), but no clothes, no tooth brush, no extra laptop batteries, no hat, no malaria medicine…a cell signal…but no phone. The pilot, who had a phone, assured me (in as much as the emotionless broken english so common in these parts can assure me) that it could be here tomorrow.

We were supposed to go to Wamba today, Titus Letaapo’s home town and the home base for the campaign, but that was another several hour’s drive still and the next plane that might possibly deliver my bag comes at 8am. Instead he found us a place to stay at a friend’s safari lodge (his friend manages the Intrepid Safari Camp and they incredibly generously treated us to their accommodations) and so we took another transit day. Rosemary Godfrey, Rare Pride’s Senior Course Manager for the Kent University program and my travel partner, worked through some follow up business with Titus and I enjoyed the view across the river, before we all reevaluated the new schedule.

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Campaign manager Titus Letaapo talks with Rosemary Godfrey. 

The Samburu National Park is in the heart of Kenyan safari country. Samburu is famous for its wildlife and during just one short evening tour that Titus took us on we saw giraffe, leopard, buffalo, baboon, monkeys, crocodile, countless birds, and scores of the various antelope including impala, kudu, oryx, and dik-dik (means “jump-jump” in Afrikaans). It’s a landscape of rolling foothills cut by the Uaso Nyiro River, a wide brick-red course where wildlife—and that means also all the safari tours—congregate. In fact, the Samburu region is such a wonder that it’s too popular for its own good. Other than the pure exoticism and undeniable remoteness, its not a nature experience. We’re told not to get out of the trucks (I was informed quickly as I hopped out to photograph a fine termite mound in great light), partly for our safety, but also to minimize the stress on the wildlife. Still, and especially when rare animals like leopard were spotted, the trucks appear out of nowhere to completely encircle the area. Titus tells us it’s a problem, and that along with all the other pressures on these animals, safari tourism interferes with their natural cycles to a measurable degree. He also tells us that there’s a difference between the impulses and impacts of the government run parks versus the community-based conservation areas he’s helping to set up and that we’ll be visiting later in the week.

As the battery on my laptop runs low, I hope for luck with my bag tomorrow. Outside the tent large winged insects bounce off the taught sides and something’s (that sounds much larger) has taken up hiding in the folds where the tarp cover has been draw back. I’ll leave it open and with just the screen tonight.

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