I hadn’t expected to see a zebra in the headlights within an hour of touching down in Nairobi – but, then again, I’m not sure what I should’ve been expecting, and our driver certainly seemed unfazed. Fortunately, so did the zebra.
Eight hours ago, there were no zebras, just five tired Cambridge students sitting in a café in Heathrow and wondering what on earth we had signed ourselves up for. We knew a few things for certain: over the course of the next month, we would be learning about human-wildlife conflict in Kenya’s national parks, and aiding the efforts of the tireless conservationists that protect the country’s rich biodiversity. Largely, this would involve setting up camera traps, collecting data, talking to experts and consulting with local people through focus groups and informal discussions.
After getting properly introduced, we also knew a little about each other: our not-very-famous five consisted of Harry, a freshly graduated mathematician, Abby, a geographer, Eunice and Caterina, both vets, and myself, a biologist. I should at this point add that our expedition was primarily masterminded by Charlotte and Matt, the tireless president and vice-president of the Cambridge University Wildlife Conservation Society (CUWCS). Sadly, due to various scheduling problems and summer internships, none of the committee would be able to join us on the trip – hats off to them, though, for putting so much effort into organising something that they themselves couldn’t be there for.
Although this made us feel ever so adventurous and intrepid, we weren’t quite boldly going where no Cambridge committee had gone before. The 2019 CUWCS Kenya Trip, for those who have never stumbled across this blog before, is the third iteration of an ongoing project that began in 2015. The man behind it all is the brilliant Enoch Mobisa, a PhD student at the University of Exeter who is conducting research into human-wildlife conflict and the ways in which pastoralist tribes in Kenya such as the Maasai are impacted by their proximity to Nairobi National Park. With each biennial trip, the goal is to expand the scope of the project, so that more camera traps can be distributed and local people can be taught to maintain and collect data from them, enabling them to make informed decisions about land use and continue their traditional way of life without hindering wildlife conservation.
A good plan, we thought – now to go about putting it into action, and hoping that the border guards didn’t take a disliking to our noisy English and non-existent Swahili. As soon as we touched down in Jomo Kenyatta Airport, we found ourselves shunted continuously from one queue to the next, as we half-heartedly waved our printed eVisas and tried to figure out whose instructions bore the most semblance to reality. Finally, we were presented with an impassive official, who asked us if we were a family as all five of us thronged around her desk at once.
“Of sorts,” chirped Abby, which we found unreasonably funny in our exhausted post-flight delirium. This was met with a thin smile, and a request that we please show our eVisas one at a time, thank you. We did so, dutifully scanning our fingerprints, until it was Harry’s turn. Due to his murky, cello-playing past, he had no fingerprints to speak of, confounding the machine and causing a great deal of confusion. In the end, he was waved through, while we reflected on the successful criminal career that he could have pursued in another life.
With the airport shenanigans out of the way, it was time to meet Enoch, our inside man. At this point our group had spoken to him twice over Skype, and I was already charmed by his easy manner and deadpan sense of humour. In person, he certainly did not disappoint. He shook our hands warmly, helped us with our luggage, and welcomed us to Kenya. As we headed out of the airport in a sturdy four-wheel drive, we offhandedly asked what the camp was like, and whether we would be sleeping in tents or beds.
“We shall see,” Enoch responded, with an air of serene calm that we felt compelled to follow. Naturally, this air of calm did not last very long, as our car bumped across the rocky scrubland on the outskirts of Nairobi and the animals began to emerge.
So, back to those zebras. Before long we learned that if we got excited about every zebra that we saw, this would be a long month indeed; whole families trotted in front of our car, as we bumped and juddered our way through the darkness. Soon the zebras were joined by impala, Thomson’s gazelle and even a few wildebeest, giving the impression that we’d somehow stumbled into a miniature safari on our way to the camp. Abby was very keen to know if we would be encountering any lions. Enoch’s answer to this, as would so often be the case, was a bemused smile and not a great deal else. As our questioning got a little more panicked, he finally assured us that a lion would struggle to unlock our car doors, and we would be safe as long as we kept our limbs inside. How much of this was a joke, we preferred not to ask, but thankfully we made it to our destination without incident.
A sign painted on a friendly-looking wooden hippo informed us that we had arrived at Kiboko Camp, as a man in a red and black shuka emerged from the shadows to open the gate. Rather less welcoming was the buffalo skull gazing at us balefully from the other end of the road, contributing to an atmosphere that was more wild west than Kenyan safari. With a palpable sense of relief that our journeying for the day was complete, we collapsed around the table in our hut and descended into the manic, sleep-deprivation induced chatter of people who were a long way from home, entirely out of their depth, and embarrassingly excited. After a comforting mug of hot chocolate (Cadbury’s, just like home!), we retired to our beds, and grappled with the mosquito nets (nothing like home!) until we accepted that the price to pay for no bites was a rough caressing of the face for the rest of the night.