AlexKeto.com

Standing on a hill outside the village of Mohonia, you can see much of the broad savannah that reaches from the foothills of the Aberdares to the base of Mount Kenya 40 or 50 miles away.  With this bird's eye view, you can also see one of the great conflicts that is brewing in Kenya, the endless hunger for land from the country's incredibly fast growing population.

What had been untouched bush even as recently as a decade ago is now being cut up in a checkerboard of cleared land to support new shambas, or small farms, often of between an acre or two.  Walking the ten miles between Mohonia and the village of Lamuria, Ayub and I passed a scene which encapsulated what is at stake: outside the fence of a shamba, four zebra grazed placidly while, no doubt, gazing longingly at the protected corn. In short, as the demand for ever more land increases, Kenya's wildlife and environment lose.

If that were the end of the story, then I would pass it off as an unfortunate collision between a vanishing world and people. And in such cases, I side with the people in the argument on the expedient grounds that I don't want to starve to death myself and don't think others ought to either.  However, there is a bit more to it all.

As the bush is cleared and deforestation becomes more extensive, water supplies dry up and become less predictable which in turn threatens the shambas. Overgrazing, particularly by goats, leaves swathes of land denuded and unable to absorb what rainfall does come in the two rainy seasons. Instead, the water sweeps away the top soil, fouling the rivers and ensuring nothing will grow.

Then there are some hard realities about Kenya. According to "The Nation," the country's main newspaper, 25% of GDP is based on tourism and 10% of all formal sector jobs rely on people flying into Nairobi. As the newspaper put, Kenya's wildlife amounts to nothing less than a strategic economic asset. No animals, no tourists. And if the tourists bail, the economy is going to take one heck of a whack.

So far, Kenya appears to be trying to balance all these competing forces.  Again as recently as a decade ago, herds of elephant migrated across the savannah between the Aberdares and Mount Kenya. But the proliferation of new shambas along the route put the animals on a collision course with small farmers who drove the elephant away with drums and firecrackers. This in turn made the animals aggressive and dangerous. Some suggested creating a corridor along which the animals could move but keeping a five- or six-ton elephant from going wherever it wants is harder than it sounds.  The solution being put in place now is to fence the Aberdares National Park and keep the herds that are in the forest from creating any further trouble.  As one person put it, the fence keeps the animals in and the people out.  And keeping the people out is just as important as anything else because as it turns out, the increase in the number of shambas means more fences and fences require termite resistant red cedar posts.

Faced with the loss of its red cedar forests, Kenya has banned cutting more of the timber, but this doesn't stop people from targeting the trees that remain. Which brings us back to the whole notion of deforestation.  Of course, there is another facet to the whole conundrum. For years, the hotels in the region have rightly boasted of the wildlife on their sometimes fairly extensive properties. But if the solution is to keep the wildlife in the national parks,  it certainly won't be good news  for those operations.

All of this might seem to be a fairly esoteric discussion which is divorced from the day to day lives of the poor in Kenya. However, as I sat around a campfire one night and listened to Ayub and Francis Wambugu Maina talk, I learned how serious land issues really were in Kenya.

In 1998, Francis said he was living with his grandfather north of Mohonia when a series of clashes erupted with the neighboring Nandi people who are pastoralists.  The Nandi  targeted  Francis' village  with the aim of driving the Kikuyu, who are largely farmers, from the area which would open up the land to grazing. During an attack by Nandi raiders, Francis and his relatives took refuge in a rondavel, or circular hut, and held the door shut while the Nandi fighters tried to break in. Using their spears, the Nandi stabbed through chinks in the door and wall but Francis and his relatives managed to keep the door shut. It was only after the Nandi left that his grandfather collapsed. Unbeknownst to Francis and the others, he had been stabbed.

"The blood was pouring from him like a river, and he just died. He never made a sound because he knew we had to hold the door," Francis recounted. 

For some in Kenya, the debate over land is more than just people versus animals, tourists versus Kenyans. It's a matter of life or death.