Toast to our beasts

By Thorn Mulli

Nothing beats sharing honey-glazed pork chops accompanied by maxim potatoes and crispy vegetables dripping with Hawaiian sauce. Doesn’t work for you? How about breathing in the crisp morning air on an offroader’s open roof as menacing hyenas look on.

Better yet, there is dislodging, in the harambee spirit, the same automobile that gave you a sense of security a moment back, but is now stuck in sticky, black clay.

And then, for the comic relief bit, running scared like little girls as hosts Queen Elizabeth and Koffi Annan chase you out of their territory, reckoning that you have overstayed your welcome. See, they are not always like this; it is just that they get irritable when their afternoon nap is interrupted.

I bet I lost you at the end of this first-rate dream of a superb Kenyan Christmas holiday away from the beach. To put you out of your bewilderment, Elizabeth and Koffi, aged 16 and five respectively, are in fact semi-wild white rhinoceros named after the famous personalities.

HANDLERS

One would expect them to be white, or at least have a significant shade of this colour, but the name is just meant to distinguish them from their Indian, Javan, Sumatran and, more closely, black African cousins.

One of the pair’s five handlers has a theory that ‘white’ is a distortion of either the Afrikaans word wyd or the Dutch word wijd, characteristic of the sub-species’ distinct square lips. This theory will do for the jittery bunch of scribes wowed by the three tonne beasts.

It is sad that the East is obsessed with the usually two-kilo keratin (the same protein that makes up human hair and nails) horn hacked from an animal whose life expectancy averages 35 years after a gestation period of 16 months.

After a little digging on what the fuss about rhino horn is about, I am appalled at the damage ignorance and greed can cause. Whilst I had believed that dagger handles called jambiya, popular in Yemen and Chinese culture, were fuelling demand, it turns out that a nasty rumour in Vietnam might be a bigger trigger for the near-extinction of this unique species.

According to one report, only around 15 rhinos were poached each year from 1990 to 2007 in South Africa, until the rumour spread that an anonymous Vietnamese politician had been cured of cancer after imbibing rhino horn powder.

Spreading like bush fire, the unfounded claims changed perceptions of the Eastern nation whose multi-millionaires have increased 150 per cent in the last five years, but where cancer management of the 150,000 new cases reported annually continues to lag behind.

Euphoria followed as some doctors began prescribing rhino horn powder to cancer patients, as more absurd claims came up. Within a few years, rhino horn was no longer that odd prescription in Chinese traditional medicine. It had now transformed into a cocaine-like party drug that allegedly cured hangovers and enabled Vietnamese millionaires to drink more, while relieving the liver of bingeing effects. The powder was also advertised as a virility enhancer and a luxury item more expensive than gold of the same weight.

With the increasing demand, a chilling 688 South African rhinos were killed last year. Kenya was not spared, as its once 20,000 strong crash (to mean group of rhinos) after independence was reduced to fewer than 600.

These are disturbing facts, especially considering that in 2011, the Javan rhino was declared extinct in Vietnam, after the last protected one was killed for its horn.

Despite the grim statistics, the friendly couple in Ol Choro Oirorua Conservancy, and others across the country, with the help of their armed handlers and a supportive population, defiantly hope for full lives laden with calves once Koffi matures sexually.

A fitting highlight of the visit to the northern section of the Mara Game Reserve is a two-night visit spent dining with hippos at the newly renovated 80-room Mara River Lodge, formerly David Livingstone Lodge. The lodge is situated in the Lemek Conservancy, a 44,5000-hectare valley through which the Mara River flows.

We have a date with beasts in the lodge’s four shimmering pools, which a resident population of 200 hippo. It seems a rather fantastic figure, and this is probably the only place on earth one can see a hippo bloat of that size.

Sitting in the River Front Restaurant got writer John Hemmingway’s words whistling through my mind: “If you have ever seen magic, it has been in Africa.”

But the sad, jolting reality, however, is that we will slowly lose this natural beauty if we do not learn to appreciate it. Tourists can only do so much. The survival of our wildlife habitat depends on sons and daughters of this land.

No matter where you plan to savour this season, toast to the wildlife that makes Kenya such a uniquely beautiful place. As part of your New Year resolutions, how about vowing to always do what you can to protect that which is yours before it fast disappears, even if it includes paying park fees.