Umani Springs
Fred, Elizabeth and I had visited the new lodge at Umani Springs – deep in the Kibwezi Forest Reserve – on our previous visit to Kenya in 2011. At that time it was newly opened but already an impressive site with magnificent accommodation and plenty of birdlife. By the time of our return, many things had changed. Firstly, the site was now being managed by the DSWT for the Kenya Forest Service.
Secondly, a new stockade had been completed to house orphans from Nairobi. This facility had been created to house some of the orphans who were seen as more dependent than others – those with injuries or disabilities for example. By the time of our arrival, there were five orphans at the site, with more coming soon after we were scheduled to leave.
There had been many sightings of wild elephants in the area in the preceding few months, including groups and individuals coming to see the orphans at the stockade, but they were still considered very shy of people and somewhat unpredictable. Fred obviously hoped to see the wild ones if possible, but the forest is dense with heavy undergrowth and very poor visibility.
Of course, we also wanted to add to our bird list and Umani provided an opportunity to start to see some of the lowland, dry forest species that we had not had the possibility of seeing so far on the trip. As part of the upgrade and renovation of the forest, the DSWT had created a number of short walking and driving routes through the forest that we would be taking full advantage of in our search for both birdlife and hopefully mammals.
In the final analysis, mammals were pretty difficult. There were Vervet and Blue monkeys around the camp and forest, but we had the opportunity to see little else. We could hear Bushbuck calling and sent a couple of individuals crashing away through the undergrowth on more than one occasion but we never saw them. We saw White-tailed Mongoose when they came to the feeding point – usually during dinner – and they were sometimes followed by a Genet but these were only brought out by the possibility of free food. Once it was dark, Emmy got out the spotlight to look for owls and this proved quite productive. Not just for owls, but for two types of bushbaby and also for Tree Hyrax. They are incredibly loud, calling to each other all night. I think Emmy was glad to find them and use the light to move them a little further away from our bungalow.
The birds were pretty difficult too really. The new species were sighted regularly, but they were often difficult to see and even more difficult to photograph. Perhaps the highlights were to see species around the swamps surrounding the springs. These small remaining areas of wetland provided a glimpse of what a productive and varied wetland it could be if the water was not all used for the local villages. We had touched on this subject with the staff on our previous visit, and they had hoped to reach an agreement to retain a slightly larger portion of the water from the springs. This visit found the situation unchanged. They still hoped to be allowed to keep more water but this – at least to me – still seemed an unlikely prospect. The springs were estimated to produce 18,000m3 per day, but more than 80% of this still goes straight into the pipeline and off to Kibwezi and Mtito Andei.
Umani was the start of ten days when we needed to cater for ourselves. We had a good supply of pasta and rice, some frozen chicken and we made sure to buy fresh vegetables and fruit at the many roadside stalls on our way down to Kibwezi. Once at the town, we went back to the same wholesaler we had used on previous occasions and bought a case of beer to see us through the first five days. After an initial trial tasting session in Kakamega, we had all decided that Tusker – Kenya’s biggest beer brand – was no longer our beer of choice. We settled on White Cap, another light lager-type beer that seemed somewhat smoother and easier to drink. We don’t drink a huge amount, but a cold beer with dinner and maybe one at lunch time is a welcome cooler.
If I was to sum up Umani Springs for this second visit, I would have to say that my feelings were quite mixed. The location and accommodation are both stunning. The property is completed to the highest standards and the service is fantastic. In fact, if anything, the service is a little overwhelming. When a brochure says self-catering, my though is one of fending for oneself – eating what you want, when you want and having the chance to fend for yourself in the kitchen. I guess I’m just not used to the idea of having staff. In many Kenyan homes – both white and black – it is quite common to have a cook or a housekeeper. Plenty of people need the work and employment is cheap enough that many can afford to have staff. I’m just not used to it and neither are Fred, Elizabeth and Chris. We were discouraged from even entering the kitchen. With a cook ready and able to cook, we were just expected to suggest what we wanted to eat and leave them too it. We sort of managed to do this but for us it was a little uncomfortable.
On the wildlife front, the Kibwezi Forest was a little bit of a disappointment. We had tantalizing glimpses of the diversity of wildlife in the reserve and the adjoining Chyulu Hills National Park, but the density of the forest, particularly after the rains, made viewing and finding wildlife extremely difficult.
Ithumba
After five days at Umani Springs it was time to move on to what was probably the main event of the trip, our visit to the Orphans Unit at Ithumba. I’ve been very enthusiastic in my praise for the location in the past and we all had high hopes of having fun with the orphans, meeting some old friends and making some new acquaintances.
The drive in was still as I always remembered it, but it seems to be a little shorter each time we make it. The road is still just fair, the dust is just as bad and the driving just as erratic as it has always been. Of course, one change this time was the freedom we gained by having two vehicles. Elizabeth and Chris travelled with Dixon and the supplies whilst Fred and I followed along with Emmy and the luggage. This works well. We all have plenty of space and in theory more chance of spotting anything that appears as we travel along. In reality it meant that Fred, Emmy and myself saw ten new bird species on the drive in whilst Chris didn’t because Dixon isn’t a bird spotter. In fact he was so intent on the job of getting from A to B that he almost drove over a leopard by the side of the road inside the park. We never saw a sign of it, but Chris says he saw its tail as it vanished into the undergrowth.
Having been in Tsavo in December before, I knew that it would be difficult to see much game because of the thickness of the bush, but we also knew that there was the possibility of seeing wild elephants at any time, either at the stockade, the mud bath or almost anywhere else. The last visit I had made there had been in September, before the rains made everything lush and green, making viewing slightly easier than it would be this time round.
We quickly settled into our Ithumba routine. Up before six to see the orphans released for the day and see if they were alone or joined by anyone else. Then down to the mud bath at eleven to see the orphans take a splash in their pool. Finally, off to lockup for five to see them all safely back home. I have to confess to missing some of the early mornings. Five-thirty is just a little too early in the morning for me to manage every day. Chris and I made it up on the first morning there, but were left behind because we were two minutes late at the vehicle and Dixon had already left.
Perhaps because I had been here twice before, I found it all a little … predictable. It isn’t, of course, as anything can and does happen, but it is all mostly routine. Naturally, I’m looking for the photos that drive my visits and I don’t always get those just from the orphans leaving the stockades.
By the second morning we were all starting to get a bit edgy; we’d seen a leopard’s tail, one wild elephant, a couple of jackal and a family of warthogs. We had been complaining amongst ourselves about the park fees in relation to this apparent dearth of wildlife. In Tsavo they are 75 dollars per day, with no discounts and quite hefty vehicle charges on top. This meant that we had paid $1500 for our five night stay in the park. Of course the problem is not so much with the fees, but rather with what you may be getting for the money. If you’re in a frequently visited park with a virtual (if not absolute) guarantee of seeing the big five, then $75 is not an unreasonable amount. The problem is that northern Tsavo is not like that. It should be a separate park with a different structure because viewing game is hard – very hard. Some of the other less-frequented and less accessible parks are in the $20 - $40 range and this is much more understandable. Of course, the wild animals are there, we just hadn’t been able to see them.
All this was about to change. By mid-afternoon, the heat was oppressive, with temperatures in the mid-thirties and no sign of clouds or a cooling breeze, three in the afternoon is a time for dozing or reading. Most of us were sitting on the upper deck of the main lodge, enjoying the breeze and glancing into the surrounding trees for the occasional bird. Fred suddenly gets quite animated.
“There are wild elephants on the dam!” he exclaims. “Let’s get Dixon out and go for a look.” Suddenly we are full of activity despite the heat. We rush to find our driver, get our cameras and get into the car. By the time we are all assembled, Emmy has done some more observing. “There look like 20 or 30 of them, some of them very big!” he says as we pile into the Landrover.
Even Dixon is keen and excited as we make the short drive down the road to the airstrip and across it to the dam. As we creep slowly on to the dam, there are indeed elephants, but not just 20 or 30, there are 300 or 400 all drinking or splashing in the pool. None of us have ever seen such a concentration of elephants in one spot, not anywhere in Africa. As we approach they shy away, but soon they are settled and there is a constant flow of new groups coming to the water and satisfied groups moving away to browse. Many of them are family groups, but there are also groups of bulls – massive bulls. I’ve never seen tuskers like this in numbers before – sure there are magnificent bulls in Ngorongoro, Tsavo and Amboseli, but singly or in twos and threes. Here there are dozens of huge bulls, with enormous metre-long tusks, all vying for attention and dominance.
I start by trying to shoot a couple of panoramas of the scene – it’s impossible to take it all in with a single shot using my long zoom. Back in the Isle of Man, Russell had said it was maybe time for the shop’s big over-counter image to be changed from one of the TT races to something different and now I think I have the shot for him – 400 elephants at the Ithumba dam with Kimathenya in the background. I took hundreds of photos. There were big bulls pushing and snorting, families drinking, babies bathing and whole groups greeting each other by the waterside.
As we sat for more than an hour, groups of twenty or thirty animals would arrive and satisfied families would depart to the north. At one point we had a group passing us on either side to join in the fun, each family accompanied by one or more of the massive bulls. Finally Dixon decides that we should try and change viewpoints and this seems to be all the trigger the huge herds need to move on. Within minutes they are gone, scattered into the woodland to the north by the sound of the engine starting. We move reluctantly off to the lock-up – far too late to see the orphans safely home but full of excitement and awe.
I’m a fairly emotional kind of person – I cry at movies and am prone to the odd outburst of emotion. I was genuinely moved by the experience.
There were just the six of us there that afternoon. How many people in the world today have seen 400 elephants, let alone 400 elephants all together in a small space, greeting each other and playing around the water? What had brought them all to the water on that afternoon? Would such a site ever be seen again? The population of elephants in Tsavo had been recovering for decades, until there were as many as 12,000 at the turn of the decade. This had apparently fallen back to 11,000 by 2013/14, the result of increased poaching. The massive aggregation that we saw that day were nervous enough to move on at the sound of a single vehicle – a damning indictment on the state of the elephant’s view of man.
We had experienced the highs and lows of the interaction of man and the elephant – orphans being rescued and rehabilitated by caring and dedicated individuals on the one hand and the fear of man exhibited by wild elephants on the other. I think we were all privileged to see what we saw and I’m sure that none of us will forget the elephants of Ithumba Dam.
For all of the following day we all wondered if we would see more wild elephants until Emmy said to me around four in the afternoon “I’ve been watching the elephants coming to the dam – there are quite a few there now.” I rounded everybody up and we set off once more. This time we were a little disappointed – there were only 180 or so of them this time. We couldn’t tell if they were the same elephants as we had seen the day before or if they were more family groups still moving through the area.
There did seem to be even more big bulls in these groups, massive animals with enormous tusks and a very clear pattern of dominance. The scene was horribly marred by the sight of a large bull, cruelly maimed by a snare – his trunk torn to shreds about 40cm from the tip by his efforts to free himself from the trap. This is the sickening side of poaching in east Africa. Snares are not set for elephants, but for antelope or other smaller game. Once caught by the trunk, an elephant will tear itself free if it can, resulting in horrific injuries like the one we saw before us. I didn’t take many photos of this – I just couldn’t bring myself to press the shutter – though I watched him for some time as he struggled to drink.
Fred did take some to show to Benjamin back at the stockade. He vowed to send a message to the vet and see what – if anything – could be
done. We knew that the only option from such a serious injury would be a partial amputation, but elephants are resilient and can survive such a loss with good treatment. Emotions run strong and high on the list of punishments was the stringing up of the poachers in their own snares. When cooler heads prevailed, we recognised that the poachers trapping game are only trying to feed themselves and their families. They just need to understand the dangers they pose for other animals that are much more valuable to their country alive than dead.
For the next day we made plans for a pre-emptive strike. We left camp early and set ourselves up in the shade of a large baobab tree on the end of the dam by about 3:30, hoping to be there when the elephants arrived. Needless to say, they never did come. We had had our two chances and had made the most of them, but that was our allocation of wild elephants for this trip.
We did get some fantastic moments with them the help of the orphans as well, particularly towards the end of the visit. Walking with them out from the stockades on the last morning we were greeted by the silent appearance of the ex-orphans that comprise Yatta’s group. Now completely wild and some of them with babies of their own, the group of more than 20 elephants of all ages came to greet the orphans and see who the visitors were. Elephants in their Teens and Twenties are quite big – very big when they walk up to you to see who you are! They are just being curious though – they recognise humans with the keepers as being of no threat and just want to see who you are and what you’re doing.
When they later decided to crash the party at the pool, things were a little more chaotic. Yatta and her family had been joined by a young wild bull who we had to keep an eye on, but they were all just interested in having a swim. It was very hot in the sun and they all wanted to stay in the pool for as long as possible. The young orphans who had been quietly enjoying a gentle mud bath were all a bit overwhelmed by the arrival of so many friends and quickly got out of the water and carried on with their routine. We stayed behind to watch as the bigger elephants played and splashed for more than half an hour. More than twenty elephants in a small pool make a lot of noise, but they do have a great deal of fun!
I took hundreds of photos, trying to capture the action of spraying water, swinging trunks and snorkelling elephants. Every so often, another elephant would leave the water to get dusted down before moving off and this often resulted in them making a very close approach to our seating position for a curious look or a bit of showing off.
To finish off our visit, we all went to the lock-up that evening to be greeted by none other than our old friends Kora and Lualeni. Now both in their early teens and fully wild, they came to the stockade that evening and Lualeni was delighted to be seen with Fred, who she clearly remembered from our previous visits. Even I got a friendly hello from both of them.
All too soon it was time to say or final goodbyes and head back to camp. We had an early start planned for the following morning and the long drive down through the park to Lugard Falls and out to the west and the Indian Ocean.