The "Wuthering Heights" of TransMara

By Gichuki Kabukuru

A stone throw a way from the world-famous Maasai Mara Game Reserve; the chilly and hilly Trans Mara district also known as the ‘last post’ of the late Catholic prelate Fr. John Kaiser, is a little known hot spot of many of natures amazing subtleties.

Trans Mara, they now whisper, is a land where farmers are now peacefully co-existing with herds of free-grazing jumbos.

Dubbed by many locals as the land of “rain and space”, this once volatile district is now said to be on the threshold of tranquility and progress - a land where cheetahs freely roam and where elephants, zebras, and dik diks graze this ragged and untamed lands.

“With the lake on one side and the splendid Maasai Mara on the other, the scenic Trans Mara district is encapsulated at a vantage position where the surrounding beauty is ours to behold,” a candid Charles Omondi, the District Warden, Trans Mara intimates.

According to Omondi, “While our area of jurisdiction is as big as ‘Kaiser’s Ego’, at 28 487 Sq. Km, our strength on the other hand, is nothing to boast home about. This has nonetheless, not stopped us from seeking to accomplish our call.”

Vast and hilly, Trans Mara is known to receive a good measure of rains each year, a fact that has seen the resident Maasai’s turn to farming as an alternate to herding livestock. And hence the source of Omondi’s sleepless nights.

This change in living patterns has not only compounded issues for Omondi, (who as the District Warden, is charged with the duty of protecting wildlife and at the same time, the communities that co-exist with wildlife). But also for the once free-ranging elephants, whose migratory paths continue to shrink in size as people farm more lands, and whose diet is now enriched as a result of farming. A fact that now appears to be the opening of a Pandora box.

“Whether in sun or in rain; wind or in mud, we know little or no peace in this amazing land full of contrasts, as we have to answer distress calls every now and then. Farmers on one end, complain of marauding elephants causing havoc to all their farming efforts, while herders’ decry the rise in cheetah attacks on their herds, and all these calls must be answered,” Omondi revealed.

“With a combo of negligible resources, our few rangers are forced to work at odd hours and over an area that is too expansive in an effort to answer the hue and cry of distressed communities that have for years co-existed with wildlife. It is on this basis, that we were forced to come up with ingenious ways of helping the distressed communities while at the same time, doing less - but more focused work,” Omondi states.

Working with resource persons from the World Wide Fund (WWF), Omondi sought to find a lasting solution to this recurrent issue of human-elephant conflict, a problem that has been prevalent in Trans Mara district for a long time.

“Borrowing from India and other places where human-elephant clashes have been minimized by the use of alternative technology, we decided to develop our own affordable technique which can then be replicated by farmers in the whole of our region and Kenya in general,” he notes.

According to Omondi, “Though our ‘invention’ or will I call it improvisation is still at the experimental phase, we have recorded considerable success and we are now advising farmers in the whole of Trans Mara to adopt it.”

Dubbed as the Pepper-oil technology, Omondi’s team mixes a gallon of used engine oil with that of ground pepper (chilly). They then stir the concoction thoroughly before dipping a long strand of rope in the mix, which is then left in the container for a night before being tied around ones piece of shamba.

“So effective is this simple technology in keeping elephants at bay, we are now seeing farmers adopt it and we believe that if it is improved further, farmers can benefit even more,” he opines.

An alternative to the usage of thunder flash, flash lights, burning torches and noisy jingles, this innovations which manipulates the elephants sense of smell is yet another system that the Kenya Wildlife Service is encouraging farmers to employ as a means of co-existing with wildlife.

“Our rangers are only allowed to shoot an elephant or any other wildlife, on the event that it endangers the life of people or where it has become rogue and can therefore, not be controlled. Otherwise, we at all times seek to encourage the use of alternative knowledge and technology as this, in mitigating human-elephant conflicts, after all elephants are still considered endangered and thus protected by law,” surmises Paul Gathitu, Head of Community Wildlife Service at the Kenya Wildlife Service.

Ends.