Conversation with a chief
Category: Mara Triangle, Podcasts | Date: Apr 04 2008 | By: admin
While in the Mara I enjoyed how quiet it was, the absence of noisy irritating tourists, there were virtually no other cars around, the wildlife was having a great time. But the people and the Mara are suffering. This post was recorded while I was visting Kimojino a few weeks ago. I posted stories, podcasts and photos earlier about the tourism collapse here and the killing of a lion by a warthog here. This post is about a conversation I had with Kipas, the village chief.
This is Kipas, the chief of Enkereri Masai village. I think that what he has to say about the effect of the tourism collapse on his community is one of the most touching conversations I’ve had in a long time. Another person has written about his wisdom, charm and wit here.
The photos help to illustrate the scenes
The village is perched on the escarpment. The community and their goats have a view to kill for!
I don’t think these are all his wives, but he is chief of all these women, 18 families in all.
The women are among the most beautiful creatures on earth!
In the village, work is segregated, men carve weapons and talking sticks using only a machete
Women adorn the talking sticks - listen to the podcast to learn more about the Masai talking stick
All the women are involved in the beautiful art of beading, including Kipas’s mother here.
And apart from beauty, and crafts, the women are sensational singers.
The men are responsible for bringing the cows home at the end of the day.
I’d really appreciate feedback. Did you like this podcast? Shall I keep them coming?
Elephants in Washington
Category: Amazing facts | Date: Mar 24 2008 | By: admin
It is my last day in Washington DC and time to update you all. Here it all is in pictures.
Directors and friends met for two days and discussed WildlifeDirect progress at Stony Brook University in Long Island at the Turkana Basin Institute. We worked throughout lunch to get the business finished.
Easter Monday is not a holiday in DC though you’d never know from the festival atmosphere. This dog was decorated for Easter and brought out with the hundreds of spectators to see the elephants paraded through the streets.
Ten elephants and tens of horses, cars and circus performers paraded down the streets of the capital. The police were out in force, keeping the public from getting too close, and especially those pesky PETA people and others who are protesting the use of elephants in circuses.
The elephants dutifuly walked in single file, stopped when instructed, rolled their trunks on demand and the crowd got their photo opportunities on a lovely sunny but chilly day. I found this quote here and wish that everyone could read it
“The idea that it is funny to see wild animals coerced into acting like clumsy humans, or thrilling to see powerful beasts reduced to cringing cowards by a whipcracking trainer is primitive and medieval. It stems from the old idea that we are superior to other species and have the right to hold dominion over them.”
—Dr. Desmond Morris, anthropologist, animal behaviorist, author
Seeing elephants in Washington DC is so amazing, they look so calm, so graceful, …. one could easily forget the suffering that these animals have endured in their training. These particular elephants belong to the the famous, or should I say infamous Ringling Brothers. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Animal Welfare Institute — have taken the Ringling Brothers to court arguing that circus life is inherently cruel to the elephants. The case has been going since 2000 and the result, if in favour of elephants will be a watershed for them.
As I watched in awe with the others on the street, little red packages were thrown at me by clowns and scantily clad circus girls ….. they were clowns noses. On the red nose was written ‘Ringling bro’s the greatest show in the world’ . I wondered what the elephants thought about their lives in chains entertaining people across America. Its more like the ‘greatest shame in the world”
The day ended as every day should, relaxed and in lovely company. I met up with some of our most avid readers on the gorilla blog and discovered to my great pleasure that their friendship was started on WildlifeDirect. Now I know even more about the power of community building on the internet. Thank you Lisa, Sheryl and Christine for a lovely evening.
Suspected Gorilla killers arrested!
Category: Uncategorized | Date: Mar 19 2008 | By: admin
Dear all,
We have just seen this headline story on the BBC home page that says an ICCN ranger has been arrested for the killings of gorillas last year which was carried on the cover of Newsweek last August. It looks like the ICCN are taking the case very seriously and we look forward to a conviction. I have asked our team in Congo will give us further details on the Manioc valley blog. The team from ICCN may also comment on this on their gorilla protection blog. We are hoping that the trial will finally get to the bottom of the reason why someone would arrange for the executions of critically endangered mountain gorillas in this magical place of Virungas.
Read the full BBC article and ICCN story on gorilla blog here
Instructions for check donations
Category: Uncategorized | Date: Mar 12 2008 | By: admin
The good news is that the donation buttons now work fine. The bad news is that Paypal sometimes rejects some credit cards.
For those who are still having problems making donations online to Wildlifedirect through the donate button, please note that you can make your donation in form of a check to the address below. In order to ensure that you get your tax certificate, please do your check to the following and indicate on the check which blog and item the donation is for.
Check to WildlifeDirect Inc.
US address:
WildlifeDirect Inc.
306 5th St. SE
Washington, DC
United States 20003
We hope this solves the problems we’ve been experiencing and we look forward to more of your generous support for the blog of your choice. Rememeber, funds are transferred to the field net only of bank transfer fees, WildlifeDirect does not deduct any fees for overheads 
A sad yet happy Monday
Category: WildlifeDirect news | Date: Feb 18 2008 | By: admin
I have had an interesting time monitoring all the new blogs and the variety of comments that are coming in. The amount of interest and the suggestions we’re getting on comments are enormously encouraging. I realise that there’s so much more we can do with the power of so many minds. Thank you all for your your contributions it’s so invigorating to hear from you.
Today is a sad but happy day for several reasons.
First, I had the pleasure of meeting Gwili from the Colobus Trust. It was a happy meeting - I discovered he’s Welsh and not from some as yet to be identified African tribe! Such a strange name! He updated me on the situation at the Colobus Trust where the tourism collapse has had a devastating impact on the income of this small charity - which I actually started in 1997! Yes, it was! And it was my brother who designed those crazy arboreal colobus bridges to enable these spectacular black and white monkeys to cross the highway safely. The good news is that the number of monkeys killed by vehicles is now negligible.
The sad news is that more than twenty colobus and fifty other primates are electrocuted every year on high voltage cables serving this touristic area. The Power company has promised to insulate the cables, but are demanding that the Colobus Trust pay for the materials. In my mind, that’s retarded and I think we should write to those guys and demand that they act a bit more responsibly.
The second bit of sad news was from a new blogger, the Maasai Wildlands - While training Douglas I was shown photos of children covered in flies. The flies were in the children’s noses, eyes and mouths. I cant imagine how they breathe without swallowing those dirty creatures! I could see the diseased eyes in at least one of the children. It made me realise just how lucky I am that I have a good clean supply of water at my home. I showed them the playpump system which is so brilliant! I hope that the funds raised through the Maasai Wildlands blog will help to bring clean water to the Maasai children.
And another piece of sad news, William Deed, our in house blogger who helped create the Gorilla Protection Blog, trained Atamato, Diddy and Innocent, has now left us. We will forever be indebted to Will for his amazing insight, expert online networking skills and his dry humour. Below is Will and Diddy checking out photos for the gorilla blog in December last year.
The good news is that he hasn’t gone far - he will be working from the Mara Triangle to help with the emergency fund raising campaign. As you all may know, we are trying to raise 150,000 dollars for the Mara Triangle to help them through this extraordinarily difficult period. Brian Heath, the CEO of the Mara Conservancy came in to pick up Will and to update Richard Leakey on the situation on the ground. They ended up recalling stories about an earlier discussion on the future of the Mara and about Brians Serval cat kitten!
It feels like a long day but we’re only just getting started. I am energized because more than 20 bloggers received donations last week (thank you everyone) and that means that things are looking up which is a great change for us living in Kenya where things have been so depressing lately. But for those who follow Kenyan politics the Koffi Annan mediated talks are progressing and despite some hiccups, there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel. “Harambee” as Kenyans say, “Lets pull together”.
A baraza of blogs…
Category: WildlifeDirect news | Date: Feb 05 2008 | By: admin
Besides the politicians and hoodlums, I can’t help but think there are actually a lot of good and caring people in the world. Perhaps not enough, or maybe because we are all so scattered across the globe that, it is sometimes not easy to feel a common bond of humanity. However, when I started working with WildlifeDirect and began to really understand the power of online communities, I realised that we are now sitting on the most powerful and positive tool of all times.
Then, when my wife, Elodie and I created an emergency appeal blog, Sukuma Kenya (which literally means “push” Kenya but is also the name given to the staple vegetable eaten by all Kenyans as it literally helps to push you through the week), I trully felt that no matter how few people out there really do care, we can actually make a difference. All it took was one mass email to all our friends, and through the simple science of 7 degrees of seperation, Sukuma spread and within one month we had raised over $10,000/-! I can’t even begin to tell you how many people have been helped with this funding.
What was just as inspiring is that I realised just how many Kenyans and friends of Kenya there are out there. The blogs dealing with the crises just kept springing up and everyone has been linking to eachother to increase our networks and increase the outreach. People from all sectors are dealing with the crises at hand ranging from poets like Shailja Patel to Kenyan Harvard student Joseph Karoki to and of course the whole literary movement came together under a common banner of Concerned Writers and within weeks, literally a couple of books worth of material was public for everyone to read. A lot of this amazing writing can be found on the Kwani blog
Kenyans do care and we are in shock about what is going on. What I realise is now more than ever we see our country in it’s whole - the people, the environment, the wildlife, the economy. So much is at stake. As a conservation organisation we recognise that everything is intedependant and sometimes certain issues must take precedence over others for the sake of long term sustainability just as the Gorilla Protection blog has done with raising funds to buy fuelwood for all the displaced people in DR Congo.
And now in Kenya, WildlifeDirect must focus its energy of saving one of the greatest ecosystems in the world - the Trans Mara- which is coming under serious threat due to a lack of financial resources to continue security as there are no tourists paying entrance fees which the Mara Conservancy is entirely dependant upon.
My good friend Stephen Partington and a muse to many of us writers in Kenya lives a humble life teaching at a school in Machakos, recently wrote the following poem which says it all for me:
WONDER OF THE WORLD: A STUDY OF EXODUS
Kenya, February 2008
(NOTE: in 2007, Kenya’s wildebeest migration was declared The Seventh
Natural Wonder of the World)
Forget the wildebeest.
Forget the birds that flock abroad.
Forget safari ants,
those harsh, acidic hordes
that strip each leaf from the acacia tree.
Forget the spawning salmon
or the moulting northern caribou,
the nightly rise and bloom
of tiny plankton from the deep.
Forget the flock and mindless plodding-on
of fold-returning sheep.
Let’s venture lower, to inanimates:
forget the iron filings,
how they journey to the pole.
Forget specks of dust that quiver
with a Brownian lack of control.
Forget how photons in their millions
pulse rhythmically from lamps.
Forget the molecules of water
forced to tumble-stream from taps.
Forget the swarming of the sand from dunes,
the orbits of our planets’ moons…
Yet smaller, less substantial
than a mote, the lowest low:
evicted children
on the margins of the roadway,
who have nowhere left to go.
(Stephen Derwent Partington)
Technorati : Kenya, Masai Mara, Sukuma, WildlifeDirect fundraising crises, blogs, post-election crises
Meeting Anthony
Category: Lions | Date: Jan 31 2008 | By: admin
Tuesday was cut short due to a hasty office evacuation due to riots following the murder of one of the opposition memberes of parliament. The trouble ended quickly but everyone is still very edgy. So yesterday I had alot of catching up to do with Brian on our plans to help save the Mara Triangle and I also had the pleasure of meeting Anthony Kasanga of the Lion guardians! I can confirm that he is as charming in real life as he is on the blog! We had a good chat and laughed a lot and talked seriously about his ideas for the lion guardians blog…..I’m sorry, I can’t finish what I was going to write about.
I started this blog post with a light heart, recalling a fun day yesterday, the first day of late in which we have felt ’safe’ and free to go about our work freely. I’ve just been informed that another member of parliament has just been murdered, shot. Recall that one MP was shot just two nights ago. We were afraid it was politically motivated but the police insist it was a ‘normal’ shooting (What on earth is a normal shooting? He wasn’t even robbed?). Now riots have started afresh in five big towns across Kenya. We are about to close the office for the second time this week to ensure we all get home safely. I can’t describe how low I fee at this moment, I feel disgusted and ashamed but mostly confused at what is going on.
Meet Kevin, team toonist
Category: WildlifeDirect news | Date: Nov 29 2007 | By: admin
Before I introduce you to Kevin there’s some good news I want to share with you from Cameroon - the Taiping 4 are going home. Who you ask? Four baby gorillas that were snatched from the forest and sold - they are going home to Limbe Wildlife Center
Bonobo’s in DRC are also in better shape with the creation of a massive 5,000 km square sanctuary called Sankuru Reserve
And, in Brazil equally important things are happening. Ever heard of Mark van Roosmalen – he just discovered a new species of manatee in the Brazilian rainforest – the dwarf river manatee. It’s adorable. You can find this and other weird (but true) animal stories on Zooillogix – don’t stick your fingers in the cage site.
Before I go let me introduce you to Kevin – an amazing Kenyan cartoonist wearing his own designer T-shirt! Kevin is an art student who is doing some work with us. We will soon be showing you here and elsewhere …. for now here’s a teaser.
There’s a prize for anyone who can guess who these four characters represent
Today is Thursday – only two more days to World Aids day. Be safe.
- Paula -
A place called Ishango
Category: Uncategorized | Date: Nov 29 2007 | By: admin
Dipesh in the Congo: Nothing quite prepares you for the drive from Mutsora to Ishango in the northern sector of Virunga National Park, DR Congo. Within two hours we traveled from the dense and humid tropical Congo forest to the stunning savannah landscape of Ishango which is located on the shores of Lake Edouard where the Semliki River flows out.
The grass is so green from the short rainy season and the Congo Cobs, a beautiful antelope is certainly not short of good food. As we approached, I saw the mass fresh water lake appear and the reconstructed Ranger’s post which overlooks the magnificent Semliki River. It’s huge!
Pods of hippos laze around comfortably cooling themselves and the occasional grunt echoes across the Savannah. The place is alive with hundreds of different bird species. I now know why Samantha says this is her favourite spot in DR Congo.
We were greeted by Atamato who I felt that I knew so well from his blog. He on the other hand, was surprised that I even knew his name. Once again, the hospitality of the Rangers was as welcoming as the twittering of the birds.
When Atamato suggested we take a ride down the river, I was up in a flash. Samantha had told me stories of elephants wading in the water and now I had a once in a lifetime opportunity to see this for myself.
Of course luck always plays a part in coming across wildlife and today, I could not have been luckier. Not far down the river amongst a lazy pod of hippos was a solitary elephant bathing itself. Elephants are no novelty for me as I am spoilt for wildlife coming from Kenya but this had to be one of the most spectacular sites I had come across. We slowly drifted towards the elephant and he sensibly increased his distance as the hippos curiously observed the scene.
And a ride down the river is not complete without being mock charged by Karibu the hippo, a mother of two, who like any sensible mother will do anything to protect her children. Atamato and the others know each pod of hippos like one would know their neighbours and have appropriately named them after famous Congolese singers. If only Papa Wemba knew that a pod of hippos were named after him! What an honour!
Like most places, a short visit is always a thrill and one soaks in the best but being posted here is no holiday. There is no public transport and the closest human settlement where you can buy basic food rations is over an hour’s walk away. The rangers take turns going on 5 day patrols on the lookout for poachers laying snares and other illegal activities. I can imagine it gets quite lonely out here to say the least.
A big thanks to all in Congo for opening my eyes to so much.
Eating monkeys, crashing cars and catching viruses
Category: WildlifeDirect news | Date: Nov 27 2007 | By: admin
Paula here … in the office enjoying an ant free experience (which Ephrem, Dipesh and others could kill for right now).
Today I was sent a very disturbing story that I’d like to share. Actually the entire week has been disturbing already, and it’s only Tuesday! I’ll start with the story…
Dino of Dudu Diary sent me link to an extraordinary story – it reminded me that as much as we love and try to preserve our different cultures, it can get you into legal problems. Take this story by Tom Hays for example … it’s about a lady of Liberian decent who has been importing monkeys meat and bones (among other things) into USA – it seems that she has been doing it for many many years. I shudder to think about how many monkeys have died for the cultural and religious purposes of the African diaspora in USA and Europe. You can read it here
How could you even think about eating someone who tickles you?
I love the fact that she may get 5 years for this offense (If laws were like this in Africa we might not be losing so much wildlife) .. .but I can’t help wondering about the justice system. She’s currently serving a 2 year sentence for trying to run over a woman who she suspected of sleeping with her husband. 2 years for attempted murder, 5 for importing monkey meat….Hmmm……
Is it me, or is there something odd about this?
Talking of cars and running over things, I have another bit of bad news is about Masumi and Will who are doing a safari at the coast – helping our existing and new bloggers. Dipesh and others have described the roads (or lack of) in Congo where road traffic is dangerous … but then we don’t have to go far….
We have our own home grown flying coffins….Kenyan matatus (read over-loaded public transport system driven usually by a mad man who may or may not be intoxicated). Will was driven off the road by a crazy matatu driver who was overtaking another crazy matatu driver and basically hogging the entire road.
To save his life he pulled off the road and ate a sign board…. this minor accident could have been deadly… (well, the car is pretty messed up and may consider itself to be in Intensive Care) but there were no human injuries. The matatu drivers drove on - ignoring Will - though many other people came to his rescue.
Dealing with the police has been a major headache but it’s all sorted now (call it an education). I’m sure we will give a full update of this safari complete photos once Will and Masumi catch their breath.
It’s only 2 pm but Juliet of the Northern Rangelands Trust has also just reminded us that eating monkeys is not the only wildlife problem … we have an enormous amount of work ahead of us if we are to tackle the poisoning of predators which may be one of the biggest challenges that these animals face in Africa today. We will be letting you know about this new campaign quite soon. The pictures may shock you so for now I’ll leave you with a happy one…
We should learn from our cousins and play more!
The sun is shining outside, monkeys are playing and there is never a dull moment in this office….. I had a good chuckle at Dipesh’s expense today… his computer has died due to a virus called Kibaki. He’s a very quiet guy so you may not know that Mr. Mwai Emilio Kibaki is our current president, but he is fighting vigorously for re-election which is an extremely dirty business that will be held in less than a month. He’s doing an Obama on us and has a website (WOW!!!) but sadly for him it is infecting anyone who dares visit it…… Why weren’t the ministers this innovative and effective when in office?
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