The great annual wildebeest migration in Kenya is one of nature’s greatest spectacles; one of the ‘Seven New Wonders of the World.’
Nowhere in the world is there a movement of animals as immense as the 1.5 million pounding hooves on their way from the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania to Kenya’s Masai Mara Game Reserve in search of greener pastures via the Nguruman Escarpment, Grumeti and Mara Rivers around July through October.
But as wildebeests migrate, so do prostitutes; and tour drivers with dough to burn make for easy prey.
A tour operator, Ann Wamuyu, told The Nairobian that the entire wildebeest migration period means there is never any available hotel room in Sekenani, about four kilometres to the Mara.
“These women come in hordes and book entire hotels. Their main attraction are tour drivers,” says Wamuyu, adding that many get drugged and robbed by the prostitutes.
“The tour drivers usually have money. The tips from grateful tourists can be more than Sh20,000 per day. And this is the money that attracts prostitutes,” says Wamuyu, who has been in the business for eight years.
The drivers also have an imprest fund that’s used to facilitate the tours. “It could be between Sh40,000 to Sh100,000 and if a driver isn’t careful, he will be drugged and the money stolen by the sex workers,” says Wamuyu.
Sekenani is the go-to place in the evenings after day tours and game drives. Sekenani is like modern day Sodom and Gomorrah. The hotels, some built behind shops and pubs, are storeyed and always filled to capacity. The tour drivers with cash, but who may be lonely and away from their wives, are lured by the sex workers, who come in all shapes, colours, and tribes.
On average, a sex worker will charge Sh1,000 at the very least. “Men with money and high libido will go for a threesome, but pay each woman Sh1,500,” says tour driver William Mwangi.
“It’s something younger drivers do. Old men like me who have been in this business for more than 20 years have seen it all,” says Mwangi, a tour operator for one of the biggest tour firms with offices in five African countries.
Samuel Mutai, a director of a tour firm in the town, admits that two of his drivers have been drugged and robbed in the Mara. “It’s now become an unwritten rule for tour firms to employ older men during the great migration. They don’t have the youthful lust and carelessness,” he says.
Mutai, who set up his own tour firm five years ago after working in the industry for 13 years, says the sex workers devise all kinds of tricks to lure even the most unsuspecting drivers. “My driver told me that they place some sort of inhalant in their breasts that knocks out the men,” says Mutai.
“My biggest concern as a tours manager is that my clients are safe and everything runs on schedule, which means my driver has to be dependable. In our business, word of mouth counts a lot, and if a customer complains about a driver who went drinking and was drugged, and the clients fail to make the tour the next day, your business is as good as finished.”
A spot check on most tour firms, from the smallest to the biggest reveal the same thing: Many tour drivers during the great wildebeest migration are men above 45.
“It isn’t about discrimination, but common sense. If a situation arises, as businessman, you look for ways to deal with it. Our reputation is dependent on the tour drivers, and they have to be responsible. In fact, I would prefer to have female tour drivers, only that there aren’t many available,” says Simon Wambua, a manager with Great Africa Safaris.
Apart from the wildebeest migration, sex workers also usually migrate whenever there is money all over Kenya, says Penina Mwangi, the Executive Director of Bar Hostess Empowerment and Support Programme, an organisation that caters for the welfare of sex workers.
“If there is a harvest in Narok, commercial sex workers are bound to go there. If there is a coffee boom in Kiambu, they will shift base and head there and try to make money from coffee farmers, says Penina. If Nairobi is ‘dry’, the light-skinned ones will go to Kisumu because men there prefer light-skinned women, the skinny ones will head to Mombasa, because the tourists don’t like fat women. They are just trying to earn a living and adapt to situations.”
