Kenyan Safari Provides Stark Look at the Wild

By Tim Young

From SIF SATELLITE 51, Fall 1998

At a zoo, we can see a wide variety of animals from different parts of the world. However, the animals we see there are, in some ways, different from their brothers and sisters in the wild. For one thing, they don’t need to hunt for food; it’s delivered to them. Ideally, their health needs will be attended to by the zookeepers. When the animals die, the bodies are disposed of in a sanitary way.

So if you go on a safari, as Atsuko Iwasaki and two friends did in Kenya in July 1996, it can be a bit of a shock. “Sick or weak animals are left behind by the herd,” she points out. “In a zoo, though, you generally can’t see that kind of thing. In the wild, it’s a much starker world.

“There are dead animals lying around, in the river or on the plain,” she goes on, “but, you know, it doesn’t bother anyone, it goes without saying that it’ll be that way. So I thought, yes, we’re out in the wild. Animals, like sick elephants, are, of course, left behind. They can’t eat anymore, and they lose a lot of weight. You see them staggering along. I suppose it’s obvious that (in the wild) no one is going to give a sick animal food...”

Atsuko Iwasaki

Atsuko and her friends spent about a week in Kenya, a nation of 582,646 sq. km (349,587 sq. miles). They visited Nairobi, Samburu game reserve, the Aberdare volcanic range, Nakuru Lake (home to many flamingos), and Masaimara game reserve.

“In Samburu there are many elephants and giraffes, gazelles, topi, zebras, ostriches. That was the place where we saw the most animals.”

Atsuko’s friends saw a performance of native Masai dance, done in native costumes. Well, almost—the native costumes generally didn’t include big gold watches! (see photo) Masai were traditionally agriculturists, and many of them still are. “Originally they didn’t need money to live in Africa or Kenya, they just made milk, kept cows, and their food was only milk and the blood of cows. Only.” But, similar to many native people around the world, the Masai have become a tourist attraction, making much of their money from these kinds of performances, giving lectures about their culture, or selling handicrafts such as jewelry.

Aside from such “culture vendors” and their guides, however, Atsuko and her friends were not allowed to meet other Kenyans, or wander by themselves outside the hotel; they were told that it was too dangerous. “I heard there are many murders or robberies. I sometimes hear if you go to a cinema, during the movie people steal all of your clothes or shoes or even money. All taken during the movie. The tour guide and the driver didn’t let us go around the city.”

Masai people dance in traditional costumes... well, mostly traditional.

The Aberdares were a bit of a surprise to the travelers because of the temperature. “The Aberdares were very cold. We misunderstood that Kenya is very hot, so we didn’t bring enough warm clothes. It was less than twenty centigrade (68 Fahrenheit).”

Atsuko seems to have mixed feelings about the trip, primarily because of what she was not allowed to do there. “As far as my impression of Kenya,” she says, “the animals were wonderful; it was a really great trip. I met a lot of nice people, but then we’re not allowed to meet anyone except the people whose job it is to take care of tourists. In places like America or Europe, of course, it’s not like that at all. You can talk to the people who live there. But in Kenya you are only taken to the places that are set aside for tourists, and you can’t talk to average Kenyan people.”

She notes that Masaimara National Park is strictly for tourists; “Kenyan natives are not allowed to go there. By no means. It’s kind of sad.”

Of course, they met other tourists. “The people who can go to Kenya are, as you might expect, pretty well-off people. They bring their families with them; when you talk to them and they introduce themselves, they say things like ‘I’m a doctor,’ ‘I’m a lawyer,’ ‘I’m a retired teacher’...

“On the other hand,” she adds, “I’d never met so many people all in one place who knew so much about Japan! For example, especially in Europe, no one even cared about Japan, Japan is called the Far East, many people did not know about Japan... But the people I met in Kenya knew Japan very well. Mostly the economic side of it, though. Some of them were studying Japanese. But if we ran into a group of tourists, we would meet at least one such person, even though they came from many different countries. I thought it was strange that there are so many people who are interested in Japan!”

So could you say that Kenya is the opposite of a zoo? The animals run freely, but you can see a wide variety of people from around the world there, who are confined to certain places and have all their needs attended to by their keepers!

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