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After Naivasha, we head back to Nakuru. The combi needs another round of repairs, and Kefa has put us in touch with John Kahiga, a Kenya Forest Ranger. John’s offered to take us into the Menengai Crater itself along a brand new road cut by KenGen, a state-owned geothermal company.

We pick up John along the side of the Nakuru highway after he lopes across the median with his ranger coat flapping. As we head to the crater by back roads, John talks little, and, frankly, looks pretty bored. We reach the crest of a low point in the crater wall. The caldera is 98 miles in circumference and we can’t even see the lava plug in the center we are heading towards. The combi crawls along until finally John tells us to stop by a tall hill.

“This is where KenGen is digging prospecting wells,” John announces. He leads us to the top of the plug and finds a grave-sized pit. John leans over the edge. “See, it is much hotter down at the bottom.”

We all dutifully stick our hands down and it is hotter – but only by about five degrees. Now, standing by a dirt hole in the middle of nowhere, I’m getting bored, too. I snap some pictures and take some notes.

KenGen’s geothermal plant in Hell’s Gate. They want to build another in Menengai Crater. The sound of the roaring steam is like a 747 taking off. The whole Rift Valley is lined with ghost volcanoes.

We’re slipping and sliding down the plug again when John freezes like a lion which has spotted an impala. I look in the direction he is staring and see a faint column of dirty gray smoke rising from behind a fold in the earth. Then he’s off, sprinting down the slope. By the time we catch up, John has cornered a man who looks scared to death. And no wonder. John is shouting at him and pushing him aggressively backwards. Around the man’s feet is a small bundle of clothes, some iron tools, a plastic jerry can and bags of food. When John snatches up the panga on the ground, I’m no longer bored. Now, I’m worried. John carries the man’s clothes to a cooking fire and dumps them on it. He pours gasoline from the jerry can on top, and as the fire roars, he throws in the man’s food bags. Then he chops big gashes in the man’s cooking pot and flattens it with the heel of his boot. Meanwhile, Kefa and Eric collect the man’s other tools, a mattock and a shovel. If I understood obscenities in Kikuyu, I’d probably know what John is saying when he starts digging into a mound of smoking earth.

At this point, Peter who has been standing next to me with his arms crossed, decides it’s time the mzungu knew what was going on.

“He,” Peter points to the pathetic looking man, “is making illegal charcoal. He’s not allowed to cut trees here.”

The charcoal burners sneak into the crater and pile up chopped down the trees and bush. They set the wood on fire and bury it. Deprived of almost all oxygen, the wood is carbonized into charcoal, the basic cooking fuel for rural Kenyans. The rangers have long since learned there is no point in fining the charcoal burners because they have no money. Instead, they burn whatever clothes and bags they find, wreck their pots, and confiscate their tools and charcoal. For impoverished Kenyans, this is a catastrophe. The man we’ve confronted is now weeping, the tears running down his charcoal grimy face.

John breaks open an illegal charcoal kiln.

John spends his life chasing these people out of the dwindling Menengai forest, but the Kenyan Forest Rangers are desperately short of money. During January and February, John patrolled the crater on foot for three weeks, camping out every night as the only way to do his job. But the charcoal burners watch him constantly. They use spotters with cell phones to track him. Now, he says, because we’ve given him a surprise ride into the heart of the crater, he’s able to catch this man.

If John weren’t so pissed off at the charcoal burner, he’d probably look happy. After loading the large, confiscated sack of charcoal and tools in the back, we start off again. Almost immediately, John is pounding on Peter’s shoulder yelling for him to stop. Another plume of gray smoke rises from a dip in the earth.

We pile out, five big guys trying to squeeze through the Combi’s sliding doors. It’s not dignified, but we burst free. We bust another charcoal burner.

By the third stop, we get it down to an art form. John leaps out first with his panga, and the four of us follow at a run. I’m holding up my camera trying to take pictures and not fall flat on my face. Eric shouts KiSwahili that we’ve got photos already, so don’t try anything. Peter and Kefa come up on the wings. Within seconds, we’ve got a poor bewildered man and his son surrounded. He doesn’t know what’s going on, but clearly his day has taken a turn for the worse.

As John stands over the cowering charcoal burner shouting, the machete held in a menacing fashion, I get a queasy feeling.

John berates an illegal charcoal burner while the man’s son watches. The large sack to the man’s right is filled with charcoal that will be confiscated.

“Maybe he doesn’t have a choice,” I say to Kefa. “Maybe he’s so poor he’s got to do this.” I say this expecting Kefa to agree.

Instead, Kefa wheels around and scowls.

“That’s nonsense,” Kefa snaps. “There is always a choice. You don’t have to burn our forests. Listen, this is Kenya. We have free schooling for every child. And what does he do? He trains his son to do this. To burn the forest.”

Kefa is building a head of steam, and I’m not sure when he’s going to slow down.

“There is always something else they could do besides burn the forest down,” Kefa goes one. “In ten years, there will be no forest here and all this area will be a desert. What then? Who will make a living then?”

Kefa and Eric start taking the man’s tools.

It’s hard to argue with zero sum logic, and besides, Kefa is right. The illegal charcoal burners are essentially selfish men who would sacrifice everyone’s future for a small gain today. But there is another nagging thought in the back of my mind. According to Michela Wrong, a journalist, government officials in charge of procurement stole the eye popping figure of $6.4 billion from Kenya’s Treasury during the first half of the 1990s. Since then, the corruption has just gotten worse.

Right now, a forest ranger who doesn’t have the funding he needs to do a proper job of patrolling is yelling at a man who has no job prospect at all. With a little imagination, it’s not hard to see the problem isn’t with John or the charcoal burner but with Kenya’s political leaders. But when all those millions are at stake, it’s easy to see why winning is so important, you’d kill to do so.

Swarming the fourth charcoal burner.

The raids go on. By the sixth raid, we surround an old man who is blind in one eye, but nobody has the spirit to go on with it. Eric, Peter and Kefe wander off. John has a few quiet words with the man and lets him go. They all agree, once we’re back in the combi, that there was no point in making things tougher for an old man.