Conserving Culture and Inspiring Conservation
Jason Houston’s 3rd post from Africa as he travels in Wamba, Kenya– the site of Titus Letaapo’s Pride campaign.
My bag didn’t come on the flight it was supposed to. Turns out the flight wasn’t running this morning a usual. The system managing this all was low-tech—the misrouting of my bag was noted only on a piece of scratch paper pulled from the pocket of the baggage handler on the runway, and then friends of friends were calling each other to try and get it delivered (helps to have been connected with Titus). But in the end, that wonderful personal attention so absent in our world of bar-code scanners and computers pulled through and my bag was delivered by the pilot of another plane with another airline only an hour after we expected it.
So we made it to Wamba today and got the first look at some of the work Titus and his community has been doing with a visit to a small Samburu village called Milimani located just outside of Wamba. Though not directly a part of his Pride campaign (aspects of this particular program were started before Titus started with Rare), it does address many of the threats detailed in his agenda. The program is a great example of how when peoples’ attitudes towards their land changes, their behavior and then the condition of the environment around them will follow in ways that can go far beyond the Pride objectives. And as a point in fact, Ruben Lekaldero, Titus’s supervisor where he works at the Namunyak Wildlife Conservation Trust, commented that the Pride effort has helped directly to make the community more open to all the changes and alternatives they’ve been proposing.
Titus Letaapo and Ruben Lekaldero at a community vegetable plot.
The Samburu people are traditionally herders living almost exclusively off their livestock. And the age old story of domesticated v. wild animals is true here as well: as populations grow and available land becomes less, conflicts between livestock, wildlife, and then conservation objectives such as an ongoing sustainable relationship between people and the natural world around them increase. The challenge is to address these concerns in ways that do not simply gut a culture or leave them without reasonable alternatives for making their living the way they want to live.
The program we visited today was an effort to both address unsustainable ecologically damaging practices, such as methods in wild honey harvesting and charcoal production, as well as to provide viable alternatives like controlled beekeeping techniques, growing vegetables, crossbreeding livestock for increased productivity per/animal, and related value added products, like beeswax candles. The entire community is involved in the learning, designing, implementing, and today, the sharing of all these efforts.
Local honey harvesters.
Titus and Ruben noted the improved health and vitality of the community members, and as a result many of Titus’s related Pride objectives on attitude and behavior (like reducing forest fires due to wild honey harvesting or pressure on the land due to over grazing) have also been met or exceeded. More importantly, the community itself is excited about the new directions. At the end of the day they sang for us about the benefits of a conservation mindset and thanked, in that beautifully musical African way, those helping them. When we have a better internet connection (in Nairobi on the 10th) I will send a full slideshow with an audio recording of singing.