Conserving the wild and poverty among the indigenous! The truth about Wildlife conservation in Kenya. By Ole Ngais.
Dear Mparakuoni, I address this to you as a person because for many reasons, unlike our friends over there at k4w, KWS and all their ad-hocs curtails, you Susanne Nordlund, and our Australian and English allies deserve to hear it from the horse’s mouth. Nevertheless I’m 7000km away from grassroots, a lot is happening in my homeland Kenya many of which I could no way see unless I received the revelation I have now.
Not many of our fellows can put it like the way you’ve put it above. I know where you derive your position from and this makes me a better community advocate!
I know I’m worth and I’m delighted to enjoy a worthy friend and ally like in Tina, S. Norlund, and our Australian Cee4life friends!
In this transition, every Maa individual find themselves in a dynamic process of enlightenment. For many of us, the process is so painful to the point of disillusionment. Many of us bare scars and trauma from the childhood that was robbed from us, and that is still being systematically taken away from all coming generations until the truth about the root cause of poverty is genuinely tackled in Kenya. The most dis-heartening thing in all this though, is the fact that these injustices and inequalities, are smartly planned for, and choreographically implemented by those we look up to for protection. Those whom we have collectively entrusted our security, future and all trust upon, in trust and humbleness that they’re on our side.
Understanding the philosophy of poverty in Kenyan and around the human species is one of the most paining experiences a human being can be exposed to. To many, an easy problem free death is preferable than a systemic suppression of the people, one that decays the resilience and good will of the toughest human rights advocates even in the most indigenous people of our time. Seeing your very own government willingly collaborating to terminate you not only as a person but also as a people, reaves off trust and self control even from the most moral of all of us. No wonder the wildlife is now paying the price in Amboseli! If you asked anybody, it is certain that killing wildlife is not what the Maasai wants- in fact, the Maasai do not even pray on the wild, even it times of hunger and utter poverty. They love their wild as much as they love their domestic animals. They live in symbiosis relation with the wild, the reason we’re able to enjoy them today. Yet, it is the Maasai and the wildlife that pays the ultimate price for poor governance of our common heritage, the only global ecological asset of which the current human species is borrowing from the coming generations. Ours, as Maasai, as you too well is aware of, is always based on transferring what we have today, to the coming generations, in wholeness. The reason the Maasai do not shank and slice land for commercial porpoises as opposed to the neo-liberal open market-controlled system.
At times, we prefer that we all remained ignorant of the neo-colonial system sucking our common heritage as if they were the only owners. Seeing the truth is painful my friend but the truth cannot be ignored when the power to see it is revealed to you. That nasty feeling of the poison that you don’t know does not kill you? About it’s-better-not-to see the truth or pretend as if everything is alright… Because that way, your life and that of many of around you is silently lived. Rather than face it, fight against it. Than silently watch as all these injustices are systematically choreographed on you and your coming generations by the entity that was meant to protect you. My friend, our government is against the interest of the Maa people, and just about the lives of all working class citizens of Kenya. As a member of that systematically marginalized and exploited class, I feel that the survival of the Maasai people and is jeopardized by our government in cohorts with its alleys camouflaged as friends and lovers of wildlife in Kenya evident to thek4w and KWS and they shaping and inaction of the policies governing wildlife resources.
It is with a lot of sadness I say this, but KWS is an Anti-Maa corporate! It has for ages used us as cheap labor and watchmen of the wild they have taken from us to begin with. We were the main host of the wild kingdom, which our forefathers (God give them peace) hosted and protected by their ecological and sustainable lifestyle. The one the-so called civilized societies of our modern democracies ignorantly perceive as primitive.
We wake up every day; one after the other, in the rhythm and change much of which we as a people is yet to have control- or at least participate in shaping it to our benefit. We wake up daily in different levels of knowledge of these revelations which embrace various ways.. It is painful to go through what Maasai are going through and in particular when it is perpetrated and sanctioned by our very own government. For the Maasai and all other communities including the working class, the new constitution is yet to mean anything but an official way of silencing the masses in the pretext of hate speech, and other sanctions clarified in the unwritten laws of the corrupt system we’ll support and hold in place. We hold ourselves hostage when we support such movements as k4w or have our most enlightened fellows long compromised by the system
You see, there is nothing as wrong as being compromised by a bad system… As witnessed here in, our politicians are clearly not on our side. Or what is the reason n why the Maasai politicians and other leaders not talking about the unconstitutional Amboseli KWS punishment of the Maasai by the government? Or the Samburu East mass punishment where families were left in misery when their cows were driven away by the government during the worst droughts of February 2009-2010?
… I feel talkative tonight……
