full story of sarara

In 1977 there were elephant, black rhino and Grevy zebra in abundance throughout the vast northern frontier district of Kenya. But that year, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda announced a ban on all forms of game hunting. As the hunting parties withdrew, so the lawless ‘shifta’ bandits from Somalia moved in. By 1984, it was reliably reported by the famous professional hunter Tony Dyer that were no rhino left in the Mathews range of Kenya. Elephant numbers had dwindled to a few scattered herds running from thicket to thicket in fear of their lives. The beautiful Grevy zebra had been all but eliminated too. More than 30,000 animals poached in just eight years. Realising the plight, a man named Ian Craig reacted created a rhino sanctuary at Lewa Downs and captured as many stray animals as he could find remaining in the north. Elephant however had to fend for themselves.

Then by chance, it happened, and in the nick of time. Camping out for fun on a remote hill in the stunning Mathews mountain range in late 1989 (in the very spot that has now become Sarara and Namunyak), Ian Craig and his faithful gun bearer Kinyanjui suddenly found themselves surrounded on all sides by AK47 automatic gunfire! Hiding away in the dense bush and at great peril to their own lives, Ian and Kinyanjui watched in horror for over an hour as a team of ‘shifta’ mercilessly slaughtered an entire family of elephant, cutting out the tusks and whisking them away to be sold on the black market. Powerless to intervene at the time, Ian returned to Lewa so shocked by what he had seen that he vowed to act ... and to act fast. Within a short time this one horrific incident had become the catalyst and indeed the birth place of ‘Community Conservation’ in northern Kenya as we know it today. The fate of those few dead elephants has now saved many thousands of others.

By 1993, Ian had cajoled the neighbouring Il Ngwesi community into becoming the first community conservation initiative in the north of Kenya. By 1995, with much valued financial assistance from Halvor Astrup, the Namunyak Wildlife Conservation Trust, an area of 185,000 acres of pristine wilderness was born. Today there are fourteen similar community projects up and running under the umbrella of The Northern Rangelands Trust. The early days were very tough though. Initially these large tribal communities were deeply distrustful of the real motives for wildlife conservation. Was this white Kenyan simply out to take over their land ? How could an elephant possibly be valuable? So Ian had to very quickly prove that conservation could work and that it could actually provide a real benefit to deeply-rooted pastoralist communities totally reliant on cattle herding.

We flew up to and around Namunyak together, soaring up valleys and along magnificent gorges in the trusty ‘Super Cub’, with Hilary sitting on my lap in the cramped back seat... she did not want to miss out on seeing this amazing place either. In May 1997, we returned by road and camped under the canopy of stars for a week. We heard leopard every night. We saw many tracks, of kudu, and of giraffe, and we saw dik dik. But we saw little else... and there were no elephant. All gone. Could we really justify investing large sums of money here. What would the tourists think. Oh dear, decisions, decisions. But in August 1997, on yet another recce, we came across the perfect spot for a small tented camp, a natural slab of granite rock looking out over nearly a million acres of wilderness. So it was time to decide, now or never! To cut a very long story short, Sarara Camp was created at the end of 1997 and is today one of the most sought after small private tented camps in Africa. Most importantly it is ‘wholly owned’ by the Namunyak community. Visitors come from all corners of the world to see the amazing transition from a ‘bandit’s mecca’ to a ‘tourist paradise’.

In 2007, the camp will earn close to 150,000 US Dollars for the local community. Just ten years into our long-term vision, there are now some 4,000 elephant living at peace in the Mathews range. Many of these wonderful beasts come to drink at the Sarara waterhole on a daily basis, almost as if to say a ‘thank you’ to the community that helped them. They are totally at peace with the world. What’s more, the local community love them too. Sarara has also become one of the very best leopard viewing areas in Africa. This is yet another huge credit to the Samburu. In the past these cats would have been speared to death on sight!

There have been many up’s and down’s along the way, too many to count... but always the vision has remained. Ian and Hilary and I have supported each other throughout, somehow finding a way to negotiate the inevitable twists and turns and challenges on a daily basis. There is now a strong element of trust on all sides... the animals trust, the community trust and our trust. And then there is TUSK Trust. Without TUSK supporting us every inch of the way, none of this would have been possible. When a portion of the camp burnt down in 1999, TUSK rescued us. When the community needed an extra security vehicle, TUSK inevitably found a way... and so it goes on. At the end of this month, after ten years of living in a tent, Hilary and I will start to build our own small home at Sarara... supported of course by TUSK. Thank you all so much!

Piers Bastard, Sarara Camp