17/12/2014

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster
                                                 Elizabeth Bishop - One Art

I travelled to the western part of Kenya where I had arranged a meeting with certain woman who was supposed to be my guide and interpreter during my research in the Mau forest. The meeting didn’t quite happen and I had to launch a plan B for my stay in the Great Rift Valley.

I spent a couple of hectic days in Nakuru which might be well called the party capital of Kenya. There are pubs and bars on every corner offering live music and cold cane vodka. Most of them are full of people even during the weekdays and you should see the locals dancing their asses off in hectic rhythms.

It seems that there exists a very specific custom in the bars of Nakuru - as soon as you are half way through your beer, the waiter will come and place two more bottles on your table and immediately, before you realise it, he will open one of them, so that there will always be one opened bottle of beer waiting before you have finished the one you were actually drinking. Not to even mention that there is always someone who buys all these beers for you to assert how much they want you to feel karibu Kenya.

Another interesting thing about Nakuru is super green transport, namely: bike cabs. Passenger can simply sit comfy on a big pillow installed on the bicycle rack and enjoy a cheap and low-carbon footprint ride through the town. Thanks to the small price, bike cabs are the most popular means of transport in Nakuru. This is the sustainable face of Nakuru.

Another face of the town is actually not sustainable at all. First of all, the area is known for the Lake Nakuru National Park situated just on the outskirts of the town. And Lake Nakuru National Park is famous for its thousands of flamingos residing on the shore for a couple of months every year.

I didn’t have the opportunity to see the flamingos for mere entrance fee to the national park amounts 50$ which for me is quite a lot for watching the remains of something which was once called wildlife.

Lake Nakuru is drying up. The park’s wardens indicate it has lost more than two thirds of its water. The disappearing of water is accompanied by flamingos fleeing their biggest sanctuary migrating to different areas in search of food. And with diminishing number of flamingos, the number of tourists visiting Nakuru drops dramatically. The lake is drying up in conjunction with deforestation of the Mau forest and intensive land use which leads to decreased water flows in rivers which feed the lake. To be more accurate: rivers which used to be permanent, now flow only during the rainy season. Thousands of inhabitants of Nakuru live out of tourism and the town owes its growth to the popularity of the national park among foreign tourists. And in the wake of this growth reflected in population boom, rapid industrialisation, invasive land acquisition for intensive agricultural practices and following mass environmental pollution, tourists who were coming to Nakuru longing wilderness are likely to look for it somewhere else as it is no longer to be found there.

Sadly, Lake Nakuru is, together with the Masai Mara, the biggest source of revenue for the Kenya Wildlife Service. It literally sponsors nature conservation in the whole country. With the disappearance of Nakuru’s flamingos, elephants in Tsavo as well as lions in Meru and turtles in Lamu should feel endangered.

Instead of wildlife enjoy some wild-ish specimen encountered lately here and there around Kenya:

For the purpose of more optimistic ending and a pinch of fun join my brand new monthly photo quiz with fantastic immaterial surprise prize to win! Write your answer in the comments.
The quiz question is: what is this white thing below?