An Insider’s View
The most frequently visited and familiar country in Africa is suffering tremendous, and potentially irreversible damage to its culture and fauna in the near future, unless the elements now in place are pressured by international forces to curb their encroachment.
It is these forces that I propose we document and interpret their individual impact.
Firstly and most importantly, the future of the elephant population is terribly at risk. This subject is close to the writer’s heart. There are organizations monitoring the ivory trade that we intend to cover. Also, various efforts to protect the population, from raising elephant orphans to protecting grazing lands will be addressed.
On a more worldwide platform, the Chinese are developing projects throughout Africa, with the local governments, in the interest of gaining access to minerals vital to the world’s development, as they have in their own country. They are active in Kenya with the same motivations, while offering to provide some community services, e.g. bridges, schools etc, in exchange for mineral rights.
The Samburu people of Kenya are facing increasing challenges from the twin scourges of climate change and globalization. Can these tribal groups whose ethos of bare subsistence and knowledge of a millennia of stewardship survive the next decade? The tribe has exhibited a successful archetypal relationship to the land, now being challenged by commercial interest. They were strafed last year from the air in an attempt to contain their nomadic patterns. In the same way that indigenous peoples have been rooted from their homeland thought the world, from Australia to the US, governments have no tolerance for groups that they cannot control.
The most physical invasion of Kenya’s culture and wildlife is the plan to construct a cross county highway that will bisect the migration of the abundant animal life and the nation’s largest source of revenue: tourism. The world’s uprise to block it has met with local dismissal – how does the world know what Kenya needs?
We are in a unique position to cover this shifting landscape, due to our special access to individuals who are vital in these issues. This article will touch on issues that face many developing countries in the world. The article will provide insight to internal politics, foreign exploitation and the stress on wildlife and agriculture, with powerful color photographs, as we experience the effects of globalization and climate change.
Respectfully submitted,
Kim Steele, Photographer
Cyril Christo, Writer
