Across the Great Rift (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine March 2002

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Across the Great Rift (Cont.)


	Mokope

TWO DAYS LATER we crossed the river at the bottom of the Orng'Arua Valley and headed for the Naimina Enkiyio. The kudzu-like foliage at the edge of the forest was so dense that at first we couldn't find an entrance. Finally Mokope slipped into the cool dark, and we followed, dodging great lianas and head-high nettles. Eventually we stumbled onto a sort of boulevard. Nearly as wide as a road, it was covered with round tracks ranging in size from large Frisbees to small garbage-can lids.

Elephants. Mokope said you didn't want to be here late in the day, when they came rumbling down to the valley to water. I tried to imagine it—an African Pamplona.

"What else is in here?" I asked.

"Everything," Mokope said.

"Gorilla?"

"E-e," he said, making the dipping sound that means "yes" in Masai.

"Rhino?" Mokope took a while to answer. "Well, he's not ruling it out," Mike translated. "He's never seen one, but he has seen a wallow and some signs."

As for the forest's name, all Mokope knew was that at some point in the past an eight-year-old had wandered off into the woods. Some said it was a girl herding cattle; others, a boy in pursuit of wild fruit. Either way, the child never returned. The story was that he or she grew "wild, enormous, hairy, and awesome, like a very big tree."

The Loita Masai had always used the Naimina Enkiyio as a source of honey and medicinal herbs, Mokope told us. Most important, it functioned as a "buffer zone" where cattle could water in the dry season.

In 1993, when the Narok County Council first moved to take possession of the forest, it cited the Local Government Act, which empowers county councils to establish game reserves, parks, and forests. There was a need to boost tourism revenues and at the same time ease congestion in the neighboring Masai Mara. The press reported that a group including a South African developer, the son of a top Kenyan party leader, and a senior cabinet minister—none of them Masai—wanted to turn the area into a private tourist resort.

In the Loitas, the fear was twofold. The Masai would be deprived of access to the forest, their presence being anathema to the tourists' "wilderness experience." And second, the forest itself would eventually be "gazetted"—split up and sold. Management at Ilkerin, a Loita community development project, engaged a lawyer who obtained a temporary injunction. "All land in Loita, including the Naimina Enkiyio, is owned and used communally," an Ilkerin manager wrote in an editorial in The Weekly Review.

The standoff lasted until 1997, when Stephen Ntoros, a 37-year-old Ilkerin training officer who had helped lead the fight against the forest falling into council hands, was himself elected chairman of the council. "I have managed to put in place a demarcation process that means Loita Forest will be set aside as a biological and cultural heritage of the local community with its own title deed," he announced. It sounded like good news, and a grateful community allowed Ntoros to build a home on a hilltop overlooking the forest.

But Mike wasn't sure the dispute was over. Two years earlier Kenya's president, Daniel arap Moi, had paid a surprise visit to Loita, flying in by helicopter. Now Ntoros, the local hero, seemed to be planning to run for parliament. Could development of the forest be the price for Moi's support? Things would be a lot clearer after the upcoming elections in December 2002, Mike said. After what would be 24 years in office, the 77-year-old Moi had agreed to step down, and no one knew who would emerge with the power.

After stumbling through the forest for a few hours, we were heading out when we came upon it—an eight-foot-high wire fence strung on wooden posts and slicing off what looked like a fairly significant chunk of forest. The fence, Mokope said, belonged to Ntoros's father, who somehow had acquired title to the land. Later he pointed out the chairman's house, a large metal-roofed structure at the edge of the woods.

It was hard to read Mike's reaction. He looked at the fence, walked along it, stroked his chin, but didn't give much away. Still, it must have been a pretty low moment for him. We'd come all this way to walk through an ancient, supposedly undivided forest. Yet here was a towering fence and a trophy house.

It was "grabiosis," Mike said—shameless land grabbing, the very thing that was going to finish off the Masai. How could a declaredly pastoral people, whose way of life depended on large herds and vast amounts of open range, survive in a world of private property?

We walked back to the jeep in silence.

An hour later we were bogged down in the meadow, all four wheels mired to the axles, and 20 minutes after that we were on foot in the African bush with night falling and one sketchy flashlight among us. I suppose, given our state of mind, that it should have been a gloomy slog. But the walk restored us. There was one scary moment, when we startled a small herd of zebras in the midst of a darkened meadow, and they scattered crazily into the night, hooves thundering. But if the lions were out there, they let us pass.

"They would never attack so many," Mokope said, once we were back.

"Well, maybe not five of us," I said. "But what if we'd been two or three?"

Mokope paused to consider his response. "Probably not," Mike said. "But he's not ruling it out."

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