Charity guides at &Beyond’s Bateleur Camp and is the first female to win this prestigious annual award, which was founded and is organised by Responsible Tourism consultancy Tribal Voice Communications in collaboration with the Mara Conservancy and sponsored by the Born Free Foundation.

In the report below, Charity summarises her training trip to Zambia’s Luangwa Valley (her prize for winning the competition) and reflects on how the lessons learnt from shadowing some of Zambia’s top safari guides can be used to improve guiding standards back home in Kenya’s Masai Mara. 

REPORT FROM TRAINING TRIP TO SOUTH LUANGWA NATIONAL PARK- ZAMBIA

Purpose: To interact with guides in Zambia in order to learn how they guide responsibly.

Duration: Two weeks.

Lodges/camps visited: 

2^nd-7^th October Kapani lodge and Nsolo bush camp (Norman Carr Safaris)

7^th-11^th October Flatdogs camp

11^th-16^th October Tena Tena and Nsefu bush camp  (Robin Pope Safaris)

Sponsors: Born Free Foundation, Tribal Voice Communications, Mara Conservancy.

Appreciation:

I would like to thank all my sponsors for enabling me to travel to Zambia for my guiding award.  Many thanks goes to Born Free Foundation and Tribal Voice Communications for the work they are doing to ensure we conserve the Masai Mara. Mara Conservancy have worked hard to ensure the ecosystem is protected and all guides are giving their best in terms of responsible game viewing and finally all the lodges that hosted me in South Luangwa, it was an amazing experience I will never forget.

Introduction:

Guiding is a profession that has changed with time. The type of guiding experience ten years ago is different from what our guests want to experience today. Guests expect a guide who is knowledgeable and who is sensitive to both the environment and the animals. Guests expect to get value for their money without interfering with animals or their surroundings; therefore there is a need to promote responsible guiding in Africa and in the whole world. We all believe that without any conservation in the Mara we might not have the Mara as we know it in the near future, therefore I do support the Mara Conservancy in all their efforts to bring positive change in this ever changing field.

The overall experience was an eye opener, I got to see and experience how guiding is done in Zambia and at the end it was amazing. I learnt a lot and felt how beautiful it was to be on a game drive without seeing other vehicles, and it was like having an exclusive park to ourselves. This is one thing the guides in the Mara need to do; try and explore some areas which are not normally visited, an example would be to head out towards the Tanzania border more often.

The following are some of the guides I went on drives with:- Levi Banda, Charles, from Norman Carr Safaris, also from the same company was Shaddy who was very excellent in walking safaris, this is where I got to see wild dogs on foot and it was a great experience. Jabez, Robbie and JJ from Flatdogs camp proved to be excellent guides. From Robin Pope Safaris were Julius and Daudi. I got an opportunity to chat with Abraham Banda who was voted one of the best safari guides worldwide and he had just returned from the UK where he attended the award ceremony at the RGS.

The important things I noted from the above guides were their level of professionalism, they were sensitive to the environment and animals, no off road driving is allowed in the park and no crowding of animals, only three vehicles at any sighting, every guide did or observed the rules with or without the presence of the scouts “park rangers” because every guide knows what is expected from him/her. In their drives they included many small things like birds, insects, flowers or trees.

Points to note:

i. There is no off road driving allowed in the South Luangwa National Park because of the fragile ecosystem, every guide or any person driving in the park understands this.

ii. In every sighting only three vehicles are allowed, guests are briefed about this rule, the first vehicle to get to the sighting is the first to get out, additional vehicles wait at a distance.

iii. No radio communication is allowed, only used to get in touch with the lodges. Any guide passing animal sightings over a radio is punished. Use of radio is believed to lead to rushing from one sighting to the other.

iv. The guides in Zambia have role models to emulate.

v. No scouts or rangers in the park at all times.

vi. There is good communication between the scouts and the guides.

vii. There is a way of disciplining the guides who break the rules, first and second time they pay a fine and the third time the guide is expelled from the park, both the lodges and camps also agree on this rule.

viii. There are less self drives in the park.

ix. Roads are properly maintained and during the rainy season some parts of the park are closed and this is communicated to the guides through memo.

x. The guiding body in Zambia is trying to form a body that is responsible to oversee guiding activities. The other important thing that this body will do is to introduce a pass or license given to all guides working in Zambian parks, the pass will be taken away from any guide that keeps breaking the rules and without this pass he or she is not allowed to drive in any other Zambian park.

xi. During the low season they conduct refresher courses for guides who are available, all the guides interact and bring different ideas and try to work out solutions for any problem.

Problems encountered in the mara:

i. There is too much traffic in the Mara which leads to crowding the animals, the rule of only five vehicles need to be followed all the time.

ii. Many self drives getting to Mara might not be familiar with the rules.

iii. The problem of going off road either to view animals or to get somewhere, I believe this is the biggest problem at the moment.

iv. Use of radio is being misused by many guides. Driving with the radio on all the time is a big nuisance to most of the guests.

v. Communication between rangers and the guides need to be worked out.

vi. No meetings between park rangers and the residents guides in the Mara.

vii. Some times the park rangers close some roads without informing the guides and when guides are found driving in such roads, it causes a lot of friction between the parties.

Solutions:

i. The big problem[s] is [are] going off road and crowding of animals.

ii. The Mara Conservancy has been working hard to ensure guides adhere to the rules but they should continue being strict and with time we will notice the difference, guides will notice that the Conservancy is not relenting and they will have no option but to follow the rules.

iii. The self drives in the Mara should either be forced to read the rules or be given a guide to be   with them on their drives.

iv. Use of radio should be monitored.

v. The communication between the rangers and the resident guides should be improved; we should see one another as a brother or sister and not one who is an offender or one who is ready to point out our mistakes.

vi. I recommend we try to hold meetings perhaps once a month to see where the problem is and how to solve it. It is the responsibility of all the lodges or camps and the Conservancy to work out ways of uniting all people working in the park.

vii. When there is important information or something the Conservancy wants to do either closing particular roads or doing anti poaching they should send a memo to all resident guides and some of us are willing to assist, this one we can build our working relationship with other guides or rangers.

viii. Before first drive guides should brief their guests about the park rules and explain to them   clearly, guests would appreciate if they are briefed about conservation issues of the Mara. When a guide breaks the rules, the park ranger should approach the guide in a polite manner and explain to both the guests and the guide of the mistake that has been done. When the guests understand the rules the guide will be careful next time not to get him or herself in the same mistake again. 

Conclusion

• Maasai Mara is a well known destination; every guest would like to visit it once in their life time.
• We should appreciate having such a beautiful place by conserving it for future generations.
• We should have a passion that drives us to keep it in its natural state.
• Every guide or ranger should be responsible for what they do or the choices they make when they are doing their drives, you might decide to get close to an animal today and tomorrow you fail to see the same animal because of your actions, what we should remember is that what we do today, either good or bad will come to follow us tomorrow.
• We should leave the Mara a better place than what we found it. I do believe we can and will make this place a favorable destination to visit if we all work together as a team.
• We should be encouraged to know that any big achievement we see today started with a small step, what the Conservancy is doing is a great job they deserve a pat on the back, it might look difficult but one day we will look back and be grateful for having taken that step.

Report complied by Charity Cheruiyot (Nov 2010)

Log onto the High Five Club website and buy a year’s High Five Club membership for a friend or relative (or as a life changing present to yourself!). Or for just £5 you could buy the gift of an egg-laying chicken for a community-owned poultry project in Zambia’s Luangwa Valley – which provides a valuable protein source for a communty that is lucky if they get to eat meat 5 times a year – or, for £10, a stake in the building of a new classroom block for Kamanga Community School in  Zambia’s biggest slum area of Lusaka – a school set up by the community themselves to provide an education for orphans and vulnerable children. 

So do support the High Five Club’s charitable work – all aimed at “changing lives in Africa, £5 at a time” through giving communities in poverty a ‘hand up’ (as opposed to a ‘hand out’).

To secure the grant TVC’s project has to win a reader’s vote on Travel Weekly’s website.

If this project won the Travel Weekly readers’ vote, funding would be used to extend this simple but effective idea to five more villages in the northern part of the Masai Mara, changing the lives of about 500 more women for the better, and helping to protect the unique and beautiful environment in which they live.

So visit Travel Weekly’s website and cast your vote for “KENYA FUEL PROJECT” today. Voting ends on December 18th 2009.

Launched last year, this prestigious award is the first of it’s kind in Kenya and is a collaboration between Tribal Voice Communications, who founded and organise the Award, and the Mara Conservancy. The Award aims to recognise and celebrate best practices in responsible safari guiding in the Mara Triangle.

The winning guide will receive an all expenses paid 2-week trip to South Luangwa National Park in Zambia, a wildlife tourism destination internationally recognised for the quality of its safari guiding. Here the winner will have the unique opportunity to exchange knowledge with, and work alongside, some of Africa’s top safari guides.

This year’s competition is in three stages:

1. Nomination - All lodges and camps that conduct game drives in the Mara Conservancy are invited to nominate their most responsible resident safari guide, as measured against TVC’s Safari Guiding Checklist. Each lodge/camp is permitted to nominate one guide only by 12 noon 1st December 2009.

2. Short-listing of Finalists - The nominations will be reviewed by the Mara Conservancy, Tribal Voice Communications and the Born Free Foundation and a short-list of finalists selected. This stage will draw on the information supplied in the nomination forms and the Mara Conservancy’s Cheetah vehicle patrol records (anti-animal harassment unit).

3. Mystery Game Drives - The short-listed finalists will be assessed by two ‘Mystery Visitors’ during normal game drives (unbeknown to the guide) against the Safari Guiding Checklist. These ‘visitors’ are conservation / guiding professionals. The winner will be the guide who obtains the best average score across these two drives.

The Born Free Responsible Safari Guiding Award 2009 will be announced in early 2010.

Launched in 2004, the Awards aim to celebrate those individuals, companies and organisations in the travel industry that are making a significant commitment to the culture and economies of local communities and are providing a positive contribution to biodiversity conservation.

It is great that TVC’s work in Kenya with the Maasai tribe has been recognised in these awards in the ‘Best for Poverty Reduction’ category. We have been working in Kenya’s Masai Mara since 2006 overturning decades of exploitation of the Maasai cultural villages there by Kenya’s driver guides. Many of these villages are now benefiting from tourism for the very  first time since setting up their tourism enterprises over 30 years ago and as a result are now lifting themselves out of the poverty trap through their newly acquired tourism income. They have to date built their own schools, rain water harvesting and sanitation systems.

The shortlist was selected by a panel of 13 prolific judges at a recent judging day held at The Royal Geographical Society, London. Dr Harold Goodwin, Chair of the Judges and Professor of Responsible Tourism Management at Leeds MetropolitanUniversity said :

 “Working our way through this year’s long lists, we were impressed by the willingness of so many organisations to take responsibility and to do what they can to help make better places for people to live in and better places for people to visit. This year over 140 submitted detailed responses to our questionnaire and we received hundreds of references. Despite the economic difficulties being faced by the travel and tourism industry, responsible tourism continues to move ahead and I’m continually impressed as more is achieved by more people. As judges we are all very aware of the great work that is being done by so many and our decisions are often very difficult and sometimes long debated”.

To learm more about TVC’s work with the Maasai in Kenya click here. For further information on the Awards, which will be announced on November 11th 2009 at World Travel Market in London, view here.

TVC went away and looked into the issue and our investigations brought us into contact with the Nairobi-based Millennium Fuel Project run up by the now late Dr Christopher Wood. In collaboration with the MFP, and with a small amount of seed funding from the Travel Foundation, TVC had briquette making machines made and trained all women in the 5 villages to make fuel briquettes out of cow dung, waste paper and water. Each Maasai village keeps several hundred cows so there is no shortage of cow dung! The women have also experimented with elephant dung. 6 months later the women in each village are producing circa. 400 briquettes in a morning (5 briquettes are sufficient to cook a meal for a family), and their firewood consumption has reduced by 75% helping reduce deforestation and CO2 emissions, contributing to the fight against climate change. The reduced need for firewood forays also means the women have more time for other activities, including crafting beadwork curios for sale to tourists.

Importantly, in an area where many live in abject poverty, some of the briquettes are also being piloted by the Mara Conservancy and &beyond’s Kichwa Tembo Tented Camp for use by their staff instead of charcoal or firewood, along with heating water for client’s showers. It is hoped that these 2 organisations, and other lodges in the area, will begin to purchase the women’s briquettes creating a valuable source of income for the women.

Funded by the High Five Club, TVC has recently introduced this alternative fuel project to another rural wildlife tourism area, Zambia’s Luangwa Valley, where the same issues of deforestation, human/wildlife conflict and the need for alternative livelihood strategies for the rural poor exist.

In August 28 women in Mnkhanya Chiefdom were trained by TVC to make briquettes out of dried leaves, waste paper and water and together we formed the Malimba Women’s Alternative Fuel Enterprise. The women take 50% of production for their own use with the remaining 50% available for purchase by the safari lodges in the area. The Luangwa Safari Association is firmly behind this initiative and are supplying the waste paper and currently piloting the use of the briquettes in their lodges.

TVC is looking for small amounts of funding to expand this innovative initiative to other rural villages in Kenya and Zambia. If you would like to get involved please contact cheryl@tribal-voice.co.uk

For further information on this initiative view here.

The use of radios on drives has shown to be one of the main reasons propagating the lack of initiative and use of guiding skills in some guides. This in some situations has resulted in congestion at sightings hence attracting the attention of the Mara Conservancy’s Anti-Harassment Unit’s Cheetah 1, 2 & 3 vehicles sometimes ending up in friction and a unprecedented build up of tension between the Mara Conservancy and some of the guides. Impacts resulting from this behaviour are a decline in key wildlife species, including lion and cheetah, as their natural feeding and breeding behaviour is being severely disturbed. The conservancy however report that there has been a significant change in attitude of guides in the triangle at cat sightings where whether in the presence of Cheetah patrol vehicles or not have maintained the minimum approach distances and vehicle numbers at a sighting. This in itself is a great sign In Amboseli, for example, cheetahs are finding it increasingly difficult to hunt during the day due to the numbers of tour operator and lodge vehicles crowding them, at times up to 30 vehicles at a sighting. This has led to a decline in cheetah numbers. In Tsavo National Park, most lion cubs starve to death as tourist vehicles are disturbing their parents’ breeding and ambush hunting strategies.

Tribal Voice worked in collaboration with the Mara Conservancy in delivering this year’s workshops, which shared with 40 guides in the Mara Triangle photographs of tourist vehicles carrying out these irresponsible practices and discussing with them the reasons why. Reasons given by the drivers were the belief that tracking down the big cats meant bigger tips from tourists, the fact that there are many untrained guides operating in Kenya as there is no compulsory safari guiding qualification that guides need to have to take tourists on game drives in Kenya’s protected areas, ‘client pressure’ to find them cats, irresponsible marketing by some tour operators whose brochures show vehicles very close to animals or that guarantee Big 5 sightings, lack of management support when they behave responsibly and turn down client requests to move ever closer to animals and then client’s complaining that they couldn’t get the photograph they wanted, and finally a lack of control by the drivers themselves of the game drives.

The workshops equipped the guides with knowledge of how to bring the smaller things in the bush to life thereby reducing their dependency on the Big 5, how to conduct effective client briefings so that they set the game drive up in a responsible way from the very start thereby helping clients have realistic expectations of their safari and hence reducing the pressure on them to deliver what they can only do in an irresponsible fashion, and finally gave the guides a checklist to enable them to self-assess their own performance in relation to conducting responsible game drives and hence take responsibility for their own self-development in this area.

The first workshop held at &Beyond’s Kichwa Tembo Tented Camp was very well attended and supported by &Beyond and Mpata Safari Club guides reflecting these companies’ commitment to Responsible Tourism. The second workshop held at Mara Serena Hotel got off to a very shaky start with few guides from Serena turning up for the training. Tribal Voice and the Mara Conservancy hence rallied the management of Serena and urged them to take their responsibility to support such guide training events seriously and hence after a later than planned start to the workshop, and a very late finish, 9 guides from the lodge successfully completed their training.

A key outcome of the workshops was that the guides and lodges in attendance agreed (some reluctantly!) that the use of radios to announce to all and sundry big cat and rhino sightings was the one issue that was responsible for many of the problems in the Mara. The new Senior Warden hence agreed that a new park rule would be introduced banning the use of radios in the park except for in emergency situations. So a very rewarding 2 days!

For further information on TVC’s Kenya responsible guiding initiative click here.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8129816.stm   

Gamewatcher Safaris are involved with the conservancies and are using their tourist camps there to generate income to pay for the management of the conservancies and to fund community projects in the area - projects that provide a ‘hand up’ to these Maasai communities rather than the unsustainable model so often witnessed in tourism areas of hand-outs and kind donors.

The Gamewatcher Safaris business model is one to take a look at as they are using the community wildlife conservancies to attract tourism business that not only allows them to achieve their own profit targets but also creates an income for conservation and improves local livelihoods. See http://www.porini.com/ for info on Gamewatcher Safaris.