All charged up for the Aberdares

Antony Gitonga

She arrived in Kenya as a teenage visitor, fell in love with the country and decided to stay. That is why Sarah Higgins cannot sit back and watch the country she loves succumb to environmental degradation.

With a radiant smile and a firm handshake, Sarah welcomes the Sunday Magazine team to her home on Moi South Lake Road, Naivasha.

Sarah joins a veterinary officer treating an injured bird.

And with a spring in her energetic step, she walks us around the vast compound located a few metres from Lake Naivasha. She stops to examine a tree that looks like it’s about to crash to the ground any moment.

Concern etched on her face, she contemplates ways to save the acacia tree as she skips over another that fell years ago and is decaying.

There are several varieties of trees and bushes in the clean quiet compound whose silence is frequently broken by the chirping of various species of birds.

Suddenly, our tour is cut short by a worker who tells Sarah she is needed at the nearby plastic pole ‘factory’.

At the factory, tonnes of waste plastic mainly from neighbouring flower farms lie in huge heaps, waiting to be transformed into plastic poles.

The poles are used to fence the Aberdare Forest. Sarah stands near a pile as she ponders the next move after learning production has stopped due to power failure.

This is a typical morning for 59-year-old Sarah, a renowned environmentalist who has dedicated her life to saving the country’s endangered forests, lakes, birdlife and other natural resources.

She came to Kenya in 1970 to visit relatives in the Subukia Valley as a naÔve 19-year-old girl.

Sarah and Mike Higgins are the best of friends. [Photos: Anthony Gitonga]

"I immediately loved the country and when my relatives left, I stayed behind and have never regretted that decision," she says.

In 1972, she met a widower, Mike Higgins, who had two young sons aged eight and ten.

"We could not keep our eyes off each other! We fell in love and, as they say, the rest is history!" she sums up with a coy smile.

For years, Sarah and Mike have dedicated their efforts to saving the Aberdare Forest, raising about Sh4.5million a year, which goes to the Rhino Ark Trust.

Sarah is one of the leading contributors to the challenging annual fundraiser dubbed ‘Rhino Charge’ whose mission is to put up an electric fence around the Aberdare Forest to save it.

Rhino charge

Participants in the Rhino Charge have to compete on a gruelling cross-country course in 4x4 vehicles. All funds raised by this event are donated to Rhino Ark.

In the 19 Rhino Charges that the Higgins have participated in, they have managed to raise Sh39.6 million.

As she speaks about the charge, her eyes glow, she becomes excited and it is evident she is passionate about the cause.

Rhino Ark was formed in 1988 by the conservationist and engineer, Ken Kuhle, in response to the threat of extinction in the Aberdares of the Black Rhino, which was being ruthlessly poached for its horn.

"The main idea came up 21 years ago and it was to protect the forest, the water towers and the tens of wild animals," says Sarah.

She says funds that go to the Ark trust are from volunteers like her who are eager to save the country’s endangered natural resources.

"This is a fund raising event where we get money from our friends so that our dream of fencing the Aberdare Forest can be met," Sarah says.

And the dream is about to come true as the forest could be fully fenced by the end of this year.

Every year, Sarah and Mike head to the charge venue in their Lada Niva car number 22 ready to drive ‘crazily’ over boulders and riverbeds in the wilderness.

"We have nicknamed our car Gorby as we bought it when Gorbachev was the President of Russia," she says with a smile.

But the event has not been without misery and pain as happened in 2007.

Mike nearly bled to death after Gorby, which was stuck in some rocks, crushed him.

"As he checked on the stuck wheels, the car moved under him and his flesh was ripped off at the thighs. He bled a lot. Luckily, he was saved by a chopper and taken to hospital just in time," recalls Sarah.

Destroying same forest

Instead of deterring her, this made her even more committed to the cause and for the last ten years, she has been producing the plastic poles that are being used in the 373km fence.

Sarah says when the programme started, they were using cedar posts that would be easily destroyed by elephants.

"The elephants would break the timber poles and this meant getting more poles from the forest and in the end destroying the same forest we intended to conserve," she explains.

Fears were raised that by cutting more cedar poles, their efforts to save the forest would be fruitless and they had to seek for an alternative method of fencing.

Perturbed, by the rising number of broken poles, a friend in the UK donated an agglomerator machine ten years ago so that they could make plastic poles.

Sarah and her husband agreed to take in the machine as they had space and could easily access waste plastic.

Sarah says the Government had approached the Trust with a view of fencing the Mau Forest after the Aberdare is done.

But with the current politics surrounding the forest, many have shied away but she hopes the endangered Eburu Forest could be next.

Sarah is the honorary secretary of Lake Naivasha Riparian Association (LNRA).

With Lake Naivasha bordering her farm, Sarah is committed to saving the lake whose water levels have dropped sharply.

"We have to start with the catchment area where massive deforestation has occurred if we need to save the lake," she says.

Sarah says the flower farms and the high population of Naivasha town have played a role in the lake status.

Her efforts to save the lake were recognised in 1999 when the LNRA won an international wetland conservation award.

 

 

Read all about: Naivasha Aberdare Forest Rhino Charge Rhino Ark Trust Lake Naivasha Riparian Association

 

 

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