THE FOUNDERS OF CONSERVATION IN E.A.

The white population in colonial Kenya were the minority yet they were the only group allowed to hunt in the local traditional reserves they created and Africans were only allowed to use their traditional methods of hunting where they only killed wildlife for the pot , but the ‘ mzungu’ as the natives called them would hunt priced animals and sell or keep trophies because the game laws favored them and made life intolerable for Africans , so hunting of lions , elephants and the huge buffalo was the preserve of the few whites. The colonial government justified its repression by claiming that Africans would wipe out the game if given free licenses to hunt, but it is believed that the undercurrent of racism didn’t bubble over until Uhuru  “ independence “ gave Africans a chance to vent their feelings.

Things got really bad when a new brand of poachers from the mushrooming towns brought in commercial gains into the game war and they would bribe peasant farmers into killing game. There was a distinction between a traditional hunter and the new breed of commercial meat poachers who were mainly town folks in that traditional hunters had boundless knowledge of wildlife and they were undoubtedly part of the romance and mystiques of Africa as held by the white hunters as opposed to the new group who were led by greed and who used firearms to wantonly kill game for money.

Mervyn Hugh Cowie who was a retired army colonel had established himself as a strong believer in wildlife preservation and he had in many occasions suggested the formation of National Parks as the last safe havens for game but the local white population opposed his ideas because they feared that they would be cut off from their fun and ecstasy of trophy hunting, so as a last resort, he artfully planted a letter in the east Africa  standard newspaper siding with the farmers calling for all wild animals to be shot and for the so called Nairobi Commonage { current Nairobi national park} to be turned over as farm land  , and to hide his identity he signed as ‘ old settler’ .  It took a bit of time and plenty of talks amid international and public protests , before the ruse paid off and the government formed a committee to examine the matter and a national parks board was eventually established with Cowie as its chairman. The Nairobi National park was established in 1946 and there after other parks followed including Serengeti which was started in 1951. Mr. Cowie was made the first director of the Nairobi Park.

It must have been due to a reflection of his successes in balancing his needs to the preserve with the needs of the local population that he remained director of Parks after Kenya gained independence, and it was rumored that Cowie chased a wounded elephant away from princess Elizabeths party during her visit in 1952 to the Treetops hotel in Aberdare park.

The whites in colonial EA were apprehensive because by 1955 their government was contemplating handing over the reins of government to the Africans but they were not sure of the future of wildlife , and there could be no doubt that the dividing lines were being drawn, with the natives intent in killing off wildlife they had come to hate and the Europeans who thought of preserving them. It is obvious that conflict between humans and wild animals came into fore in EA when the natives came to realize that only the whites were allowed to kill game and the game department took days or never responded to the cries of the local farmers when wildlife destroyed their farms, but they would respond immediately when natives killed a problem animal in their farms. These was the only reason why Africans hated wild animals, which is why they aided poaching gangs that decimated wildlife for commercial gains.

Human wildlife conflict is an exam that we have failed to pass even today because we have not stopped the fight between man and wild animals . We have failed to spell out the legislation in support of utilization as inscribe in the constitution, yet we are the lead agency in the formulation and implementation of the policies related to wildlife utilization,  and we have decided to bury our heads in the sand hopping and wishing that the conflict will snooze off till we retire.  We are sure to be judged fairly by history, but i fear that history books will not remember us like the legendary Colonel Mervyn Hugh Cowie, for we failed in the commissions and omissions in the performance of our primary duties which is to restore harmony between man and wildlife.

I beg to be corrected.

CADET TRAINING 1992.

It was te second year since the inception of the Kenya Wildlife service ( KWS ) and the elephant poaching was escalating nation wide and the service came up with a strategy of recruiting young and energetic commanders to lead the newly trained rangers in magadi. They conducted a nationwide exercise and twenty eight cadets were recruited and they reported to manyani field school early January 1992 for a platoon commanders course. The team included, Paul Kipkoech, Dickson Lesimirdana, Justus Bartenge, Peter Lekeren, Elema Halake, Abdi Doti, Jacob Nangomo, Elema Saru, Zakayo Leparie, Ruben Lenanguram, George Osuri, Michael Lenaimadu, Samuel Tokore, Kwiriga Babu, Stephen Mageto, Stephen Shani, James Ole Kipuri, Abdi Nasir, James Oundo, Francis Lesilau, John Suge, Oliver Mnyambo, Joseph Kavi, Kamau Ndacho, Jacob Orahle , Ali sugow, Osman Ibrahim, Rashid Noor better known as Cobra and me. Most of us were working in government ministries, some teachers , one was a priest who could not stand the seminary, students who just came out of secondary school and a few others who were working in the service at the time. A complete combination that represented the whole country and we endured the hardships and the cruelty of the trainers, mostly a man called Abdi who taught us parade drills but the greatest humiliation came from our own NCOs who could not understand why we and not them were taking the course.

The cadets on a skills at arm lesson. Zakayo leparie  alias “ crocko”is demonstrating during a skill at arms lesson and the arrow is pointed to the blog author.

Manyani field training school was the old APU camp and the facility was run down completely so the service was in the process of renovating it into an institution capable of training rangers on field craft and other related operations .  For some of us the facility resembled a ghost camp with little human presence due to the bush thickness. I was among the first to arrive and were met by a person who advised us to wait for the rest at the manyani prison place and we found course instructors there who led us to a small pub called  “ pumzika “ where we waited for our transport and they gave us insight of the course  and we were in very high spirits by the time we drove into the gate, but there was a reception party waiting for us at the entrance and my day was ruined. It is important to note here that i worked with the ministry of agriculture for six years as a livestock production assistant after graduating from AHITI [ animal health and industry training institute] Kabete and i had also taken the courses on AI [ artificial insemination ] and on meat inspection , and i was assisting the meat inspector at the maralal  slaughter house prior to reporting to manyani. So i had the characteristics  of a typical civil servant , and i had generated a small beer belly due to the free liver we received every day In relation to the spoils of the trade.

The reception party in manyani refused to listen to my plea and we were directed to climb a stone hill steep enough to be manmade in the assertion that we were to collect our admission letters up there. I tried to remove my coat but one man called Francis Kurgat insisted that i climb the hill with everything that i came with but i refused to carry my suitcase and I scrambled up to catchup with the others. We did not find the admission letters so we struggled to climb down the other side of the hill and when we reached our starting point we were panting and grasping for air but they forced us to jog and i fainted , and they forgot me for a while. What a reception. We were then made to carry our baggage and in a run we trotted to a makeshift store where we were given a mattress, a pillow and a blanket. Some rangers who were on a promotional course were called in to help us erect tents and I personally  remember one who was called shebow who demonstrated to us how to clear the ground using bare hands. I remember this man well because a few years later he disappeared with no trace to date with field  allowance for the special operations base (SOB).

Manyani had a strange collection of instructors and I remember an old man with a foul mouth who smoked a lot and i still don’t remember what his exact duties were but he was fond of drawing landscapes. He was called Kanyi, then there was sergeant Maina who made us to believe that every head of a goat slaughtered there belonged to him,  sergeant Mailu of the “ nyakaa “ fame, there was Cpl Kemei who called us officer kurutu, Cpl Kimani Mweiga [comrade] Cpl Jeremiah  Kurgat, Cpl Francis Kurgat, Cpl Ayienda, the cook called pulei, Heri the footballer [mjomba] and Lewis chege to name but a few. Our course officer was the big GSU man called Marcus Ochola who is currently the Rift Valley Regional Police Commander. We had three commandants during our seven month long course and this included Mr. Mbuthia who died in a car accident along the Mombasa/Nairobi highway near sultan Hamud, Mr Thomas Mailu and Mr. Fredrick  Kiminda. We spend the first three weeks trying to get fit by running every morning , and being at the drill square with corporal Abdi the whole day. The first two weeks were really hard on me that I contemplated desertion and I actually called the livestock office in maralal to inquire if my resignation letter could be withdrawn but I resigned to my fate when I learned that the letter was long sent to Nakuru. I later learned that I was not the only one contemplating the same but junior colleagues who were taking the ranger to corporal course at the school gave us A lot of encouragement With promises of a brighter future.

Corporal Abdi was a brute who got pleasure in other people’s pain and we really suffered at the drill square while he took us through the motions and the squads as he broke the drill into three steps. The whole team would be punished when a member spoiled a step and I tell you very many of the members had never learned of the Boy Scout movement and marching was an act from outer space. Some were swinging both hands forward and I would lie if I described how they moved their feet because in most cases they swing forward the right arm together with the right leg. All this translated to a specific punishment as prescribed by Abdi and climbing the hill behind the office became a norm. We cherished lunch brake not because of the food but it gave us some relief from the monster and from the scourge. I dreaded going to the pit latrines because of the pain in my  thighs when trying to stand after the act, and this I later understand must have been why a platoon of masai rangers Who were referred as “ lot 60 “ brought in for training refused to enter the joints and they did their thing in the surrounding bushes.

We got into the rhythm of training after the first month and we impressed everybody including ourselves to say the least after more lessons were introduced such as field craft, skill at arms and leadership. Only one person left the training and the rest of us bonded with one another , first to evade Abdi but i should also confess that we just felt like we had a responsibility to excel and silence some section of instructors who had a notion that most of us would not complete the training. Skills at arms was a different sensation all together and we worked so hard in preparation for the standard classification exercise which sifted the bold shooters and the first timers. We completed our syllabus in the fifth month and we were taken for the March and shoot exercise that combined all field exercises including close quarter battle night navigation and ambushes , which could only be done in the thickets of Oldonyo nyiekie in magadi. We navigated out of the hills and valleys at night using compasses and maps with stars as strategic beacons, and we overworked our instructors on the magadi plateau during field craft where we would reorganize ( reorg on me ) three kilometers from the charge-through site. That was our best way to give back to the instructors. On our las night in magadi a stand to procedure was sounded at night by our instructors to check on our level of alertness and we all dashed into our kips except Jacob Orahle who was found outside the kip and he was pronounced dead as per the rules but he refused to accept and he kept on claiming that he was still alive. We excelled in magadi and our course officer said as much , before we trooped back to Manyani believing in ourselves and knowing that we would contribute immensely in protecting and conserving our heritage.

The Rtd senior warden Mr.Geofrey Lolkinyie who was the  admin officer then with Dickson in the background and the author in one of our progressive security meetings.

We never sat in conventional class room for the entire duration of our course in manyani and there were no chairs and we took our lessons under an acacia tree which had very broad branches and lots of shade. We had to sweep the class every morning and pour water to reduce dust. We made do with stones as chairs and we wrote on our laps and most of us had holes in our trousers due to the hard surface of the stone seats. The chalk board was tied to the stem of a tree and in windy conditions two students would volunteer to hold it while the instructor wrote on it. We ate our lunch and dinner under a shade less tree near the make shift kitchen and we had benches made of poles as seats. We were made to believe that this was not a punishment, but part of our training.

We all went through an interview held by a board Which was led by the Deputy director security [ DDS ] but we were kept in training for another two months in Manyani due to some administrative issues where the DDS was strategizing and forming more companies to accommodate us and when we finally graduated we went to our duties as posted and I was sent to Mt. Elgon (C coy ) . I didn’t understand why the instructors were feeling sorry for me after the posting and I got concerned and I had to inquire the reasons but I was only told that Mt. Elgon is a very hard place to work but I proceeded to my new station without any reservations and I led my men in to our assignments with the pride of a leader due to the training and hard work that I under went in Manyani.

THE BEGINNING OF KWS

The WCMD; better known as the wildlife conservation and management department was a government department under the ministry of environment and natural resources and all its employees were civil servants who were either trained by the Kenya police or the army on basic paramilitary training because it was through that training that the police commissioner loaned them weapons. Yes, they were given the standard 303 mark four rifles and a few G3 rifles which enabled them to form the dreaded anti poaching unit [APU] with camps in Garissa and manyani and isiolo, and they traversed the whole country in the struggle to contain the escalating elephant poaching by marauding gangs from in and out of the country. The government seconded officers from both the military and the police to lead them and in most cases the military choppers were deployed to assist in containing the war.

This were the pioneers of conservation in this country and they played their role as the custodians of our country’s natural resources to the best of their ability with the limited resources available to them then. To say the truth, this was a bunch of dedicated men who did what they did then under the prevailing condition and poor funding to save our heritage. Poaching increased 10 fold in the late 70's and we lost more than 60% of the elephant population in Tsavo alone and this prompted the then government to bring  in a young man by the name of Richard Leakey as the director of the wildlife department and  he came in with his own conditions such as he needed autonomy from the ministry, and the freedom to keep and use donor funds without interference from the ministry , a request that was granted by the then president , HE.Daniel Toroitich Arap Moi, and in the process the department was changed into a government parastatal and named the  ‘Kenya Wildlife Service’(KWS) and it was officially given its own flag in April 1991 in a ceremony held in Nairobi Park. The ceremonial parade was led by platoon commander Mr. Mohamed Kheri and the Flag was hoisted by sergeant Julius Cheptai. 

The Director of the service was given a free hand to run an armed government parastatal with zero interference from the mother ministry and he brought in the much needed equipment, vehicles ,  planes and hope to the newly formed service.

In February 1990 , 216 recruits were enlisted from the northern pastoral tribes of Kenya for there was general believe that they were fearless people who needed little training in the use of firearms and they were used to interaction with wildlife . The government then seconded officers from the dreaded FFU, (Fanya Fujo Uone) team also known as the GSU ( general service unit ) or the red berets to manyani field training school to handle training and a man called Abdulahi Omar Bashir {AOB} was brought in from the same force to lead the security wing of the new service. Bashir was a handful of a man who bullied everyone from ranger to the wardens , but he brought in the much needed discipline and order to the division and he introduced the current departments of investigation, intelligence , prosecution and administration including the stores to cater for uniforms, compo rations and many other wares. 

The new recruits were trained both in Naivasha and at the GSU field training facility in Magadi for six months and after graduation they were posted to newly formed companies in Tsavo {A coy} which was commanded by Daniel Woodley while Mark Jenkins  [whom came out of nowhere since he only joined the service at that particular time] assisted by Peter Leitoro started the SOB { Special operation Base } . It is important to note that this were the only two companies that were established by the time the new recruits graduated from Magadi but later that year companies were formed in Mt. Elton {C coy} Meru { B coy }.  D coy soon followed as a strategy when KWS requested to run Masai Mara game reserve,. A request that was granted but lasted for only one day before it was revoked. 

There was a company/platoon commanders and NCOs course in Magadi field training school that started soon after the new recruits reported to Naivasha and this was planned in a way that the officers would be ready by the time the rangers graduated. The officers were in four categories as follows; 10 Field Assistant Wardens who included , Paul Onyango, Peter Lemereu, Mohamed Kheri, Julius Mwandai, Kaviu, Joseph Kitonyi, Mabruk Mzee, Kimani Ndiku, J. Achoki and Samuel Nganga. Some of this officers were later given platoon/company command and some sent as instructors to the newly formed Manyani field school and they were all in the rank of AW 111. The second group were AW11, and this included Thomas Mailu,  David Mutuiwa , Peter Leitoro, William Sang , Suki  Konchela and Peter Sangawe who was later killed by poachers in Meru National Park.

 Then we had two officers of AW1 rank and they included, Fredrick kiminda and Patrick Mbuthia and this is the team that later took charge of Manyani training school as commandants and the fifth group included the two sons of Woodley, Daniel and Bongo . It is important to note that Peter Jenkins was the father of Mark Jenkins and he was the first warden of Meru park, while the late Bill Woodley was the father of Daniel and Bongo and he worked in Tsavo both in Ithumba and Tsavo west before moving to head the mountain parks. David Sheldrick established himself in the Tsavo national parks in the early years of conservation in our country.

AOB was not satisfied by the level of command he got from the company commanders he had , so he convinced management that he needed to recruit fresh hands to lead his warriors, a term he used in reference to the newly graduated rangers who had too much energy but lacked leadership. This was how 28 cadets , me included got recruited in late 1991.