Campi ya Kanzi: Kenya’s camp laden with hidden treasure

Authentic Maasai culture is a highlight during your stay at Campi ya Kanzi, Kuku Ranch PHOTO: NICOLA TONOLINI/STANDARD

 

“Man is a complex being: he makes deserts bloom - and lakes die.” - Gil Scott-Heron

In 2012, I was honoured to attend the inaugural Maasai Olympics held at Kimana Sanctuary, some 30 kilometres east of the Amboseli and about 30 minutes’ drive from Loitoktok Town. My eyes were opened to the new face of wildlife conservation; one that involves the community by offering meaningful incentives for any effort exerted.

Fast forward to 2015 and I’m gazing down on expansive plains, heading south of Nairobi from a giraffe-skinned Cessna 206. Road, the alternative, would have meant braving more than 300 kilometres.

You can never be fully prepared for Mother Nature’s surprises, like the Chyulu Hills. It’s the rainy season and the rolling hills are an intoxicating lush green, just as they must have been back in Hemingway’s day, prompting him to label them the Green Hills of Africa.

Michael, the pilot, flies low, allowing me to notice that the show-off hartebeest run the Chyulus.

My hosts receive me well when we touch down. This is authentic Maasai country and red shuka and beadwork are a true way of life. Kuku Group Ranch is home to around 16,000 Maa speakers and lies in an important migration corridor of around 280,000 acres at the base of Chyulu Hills.

FINE DINING

At its heart is a luxury tented lodge called Campi ya Kanzi (camp of hidden treasure). While I didn’t get to stay in their Kanzi House, bookable only by a single party at a time and accommodating a maximum of ten guests in a setting featuring a Jacuzzi for four and a 60ft swimming pool, I was content with Longitok Cottage that boasted fresh lilies, a king-size bed with a feather mattress and Italian linen.

Fine dining awaited at the clubhouse christened Tembo House. I’m talking crystal glasses, candlelight and a resident violinist. The best part for me is the family setting, with all guests eating together.

I know it’s difficult to ignore the Italian influence, so I’ll digress into a dreamy tale. Young Antonella Bonomi meets and falls in love with Luca Belpietro, from the same Italian town.

As their romance blossoms, she graduates with a Law degree, but opts to work at her family’s vineyard, Bonomi Tenuta Castellino, not liking civil courts too much. Luca, on the other hand, majors in Economics even as his passion lies in an East African wilderness his father had acquainted him with as a young boy.

So, as all great romances go, the couple visits the mystical land and work to chart their path, and legalise their union in the rolling green hills.

Apart from the massive granite outcroppings rising over rivers, lava flows that cut across the plains, a mysterious forest on the crest of the green hills, and wildlife roaming in abundance, our couple were welcomed by a people draped in authentic culture.

But in a world driven by greed, where natural flora and fauna disappear faster than Rudisha’s tracks, only a different approach would suffice if their progeny and that of their hosts could enjoy what nature had freely bestowed on them.

Thus, the idea for a safari lodge was mooted. Rather than lease or buy, however, the couple partners with the indigenous Maasai population to create a sustainable entity.

In 1996, guided by Luca’s thesis on ‘Sustainable Development and Environment Conservation: Wildlife as a Natural Resource in Kenya’, the partners poured heart and soul, etching brick by brick for two years from an outcrop, a community-owned and operated ecotourism lodge, built around a club house called Tembo house, facing the Kilimanjaro with the Chyulu Hills forming a backdrop.

State of the art technology was employed to ensure the least impact on the environment. Local building materials have been used. Lava rocks, thatch, lumber from a reforestation programme, water comes from rain cropping, the black and grey waters are purified through natural filtration and recycled into a pond for wildlife, electricity from 120 photovoltaic panels, hot water from solar panels, food is cooked using eco-friendly charcoal produced by a UN project, and waste is collected, properly recycled or incinerated or used as compost for a small organic vegetable garden.

DIVERSE SPECIES

Kuku Ranch hosts diverse wildlife (65 big mammals species), birdlife (400 species), and vegetation (more than 1,000 trees species) on different habitats. Almost everyone who works at this gold-rated camp (the first such property in Kenya) courtesy of Ecotourism Kenya, which only accommodates 16 guests (17,500 acres per guest for maximum wilderness pleasure), was born and raised there. Many of the 65-strong staff built the lodge by hand, including assistant manager and guide Parashi ole Ntanin.

As I settled in paradise and its innumerable activities, I realised that this was no con. Antonella and Luca’s two sons, Jacopo and Lorenzo, and daughter, Lucrezia alias Lulu, were born on this land. What’s more, they attend school at the ranch with the Maasai children. On a back-house tour with Parashi, who I later learnt never attended school but speaks fluent English, I encountered the barns and coops from whence organic dairy products and fresh eggs are collected, as well as an organic vegetable garden.

I lived up to the challenge of being a real eco-tourist: leaving nothing, but footprints; taking nothing, but photos. Host Stefano Ricci, a guide and Luca’s long-time friend, handed me a custom beaded bangle and a steel water bottle intended to discourage littering of plastic bottles.

Activities include horseback riding, Kilimanjaro flights, game walks, biking or drives in Chyulu Forest, camping, transcendental meditation and star gazing with lectures.

The lodge is staying true to Wangari Maathai’s words: “We need to promote development that does not destroy the environment.”

Visit their website http://www.maasai.com complete with live feed that gives you live daily images of the savannah, for more information.

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