Wild Places East Africa: July 2018

Amboseli National Park, Kenya

Amboseli National Park, located just 240 km SE of Nairobi is located on the border with Tanzania, dominated by the massive volcano, Mount Kilimanjaro, and the locality where Ernest Hemingway's 1999 posthumously - published and masterly novel "True at First Light" is set. Amboseli was gazetted as a national park in 1974, long after the 1953/54 hunting safari that Hemingway describes.

Amboseli National Park is relatively small (just 392 km²) and protects two large swamp areas that provide expanses of water and vegetation in an otherwise sparsely vegetated and arid area (rainfall typically averaging just 350 mm per annum). The park is perhaps best known for its elephant population and the possibility, not only to see large predators (lion, spotted hyaena, cheetah), but to witness an early morning or evening kill. Over 400 species of birds have been recorded, with no less than 47 different raptor species.

Amboseli is best in the dry season and tourism low season (February/March, September) - when fewer tourist buses are seen roaming the open circuits of the park. The fine white dust of powdery volcanic soil raised behind all but the slowest moving vehicles threatens to turn the park into a giant dust bowl, do provide markers to where the action is (tour buses head quickly towards and congregate at predator kills), but threaten the beauty and magical wilderness isolation of the place.

Up until recently, reaching Amboseli, meant a journey of around four and a half hours, driving from Nairobi to the Kenya/Tanzania border at Namanga and then 76 km of badly rutted murram to the park headquarters. Since the new Emali-Loitokitok road opened in 2011, journey time to Amboseli has been cut to a possible two and a half hours (228 km) of driving - from Nairobi down the Mombasa road to Emali and from there, the new smooth tarmac road to the Amboseli Park Meshenani gate.

In December 2004, in a 1982 Toyota Tercel 4WD estate I drove the circuitous route, from Nairobi via Namanga to Amboseli and through the park. Then, across the Chyulu Hills into Tsavo National Park to Mzima springs and across Tsavo to the Mombasa road at Voi and back to Nairobi. What made the trip memorable was "building the road" (placing rocks strategically to raise the Tercel) whilst crossing the lava flows of the Chyulu Hills, and whilst taking lunch underneath a large lone fig tree growing out of the lava, the capture of a single perfect specimen of the iridescent "Fig tree blue" (Myrina silenus) from the many that were flying under the fig tree canopy. I later set the tiny Fig Tree Blue in a display box with one of the World's largest iridescent blue butterflies - Papilio Ulysses, from Papua New Guinea.

Papilio ulysses (photo sourced from Wikipedia)

Myrina silenus (photo sourced from Wikipedia)

The photographs below were taken, before the short rains in a September 2009 visit to Amboseli National Park:

Impala ram (Aepyceros melampus)

East African Silver-backed Jackal (Canis mesomelas schmidti)

Thompson's Gazelle rams (Eudorcas thomsonii) Sparring

African White-backed Vulture (Gyps africanus) on Buffalo carcass

Little Egret (Egretta garzetta)

Lone African bush elephant (Loxodonta africana)

Fischer's Sparrow Lark (Eremopterix leucopareia)

Maasai Giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis tippelskirchii)

African Lioness (Panthera leo) bringing down buffalo: The lioness used the small bush in the foreground as cover as the buffalo approached unaware and grazing; the other lionesses that had been sleeping in the shade joined in the kill once they noticed the lone female struggling to bring down the buffalo

Marabou Stork (Leptoptilus crumeniferus)

Hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius) grazing in the Amboseli swamp

Black-winged Stilt (Himantopus himantopus)

Yellow Baboon (Papio cynocephalus) with baby

Saddle-billed Stork (Ephippiorynchus senegalensis)

Kori Bustard (Ardeotis kori)

Spotted Hyaena (Crocuta crocuta)

Tawny Eagle (Aquila rapax)

Cape Buffalo (Syncerus caffer)

Goliath Heron (Ardea goliath)

Maasai Giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis tippelskirchii)

Impala ram (Eudorcas thomsonii)

Grey Crowned Crane (Balearica regulorum)

African bush elephant (Loxodonta africana)

The Plains Zebra (Zebra quagga)

Independence of South Sudan

Policy Adviser to the Ministry of Animal Resources and Fisheries in the Republic of South Sudan

From June 2011 through to the end of September 2012, I was employed by the International NGO, Veterinaires Sans Frontieres - Belgium (VSF-Belgium), as EC-funded Consultant Policy Adviser to the Ministry of Animal Resources and Fisheries (MARF) of the Government of the Republic of South Sudan (GoRSS). My contract started on 19th June and South Sudan gained its independence, just three weeks later, on 09th July 2011. Independence made South Sudan the newest country in the World, and with the third largest national livestock herd in Africa and an estimated 65% of the 12 million population dependent on livestock for their livelihoods, Policy Adviser to the Government's livestock Ministry, an important advisory role.

During this period, from my office in the MARF in Juba, I worked closely with the Minister (Hon. Martin Elia Lomuro) and Directors of the MARF Directorates. I also travelled extensively in all of the then 10 States of South Sudan, working with all State Ministries of Animal Resources and Fisheries to develop the Country's first National Veterinary Plan (2012 - 2014) and National Policy Framework and Strategic Plans (2012 - 2016) for the Ministry of Animal Resources and Fisheries.

On the eve of independence, on Friday 08th July, the city of Juba was alive with celebration anticipating the Independence day parade for 09th July - the outcome of the January 2011 referendum vote that had seen the population overwhelmingly (98.83%) vote for independence, with the end of the longest-running civil war in Africa. Earlier in the week I had managed to get an official Photographer's pass which gave me preferential access and enabled me to get photographs of the celebrations, that I would otherwise not have been able to make. It is difficult to describe the popular feelings of jubilation and euphoria on the day and days leading up to Independence, some of which I hope to have captured in my photographs below:

Friday 08th July 2011 - Eve of Independence in South Sudan