The Milgis Trust

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Dec 02 2008 | By: milgistrust

Money talks!!….

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Oct 14 2008 | By: milgistrust

But today I feel much better…40 comments have come winging in, on Blogs that I wrote back in June to yesterdays… I am delighted that somebody… LOTS OF YOU are listening… The encouragement is brilliant… Thank you ALL of you and all the people in the wildlife Direct office for helping me out…The support from your office is never ending.. [Our problem is every day we are on the move so I do all my emailing and blogging with a little Thuraya satelite phone, so checking on the site is difficult, and expensive.. its time I got Thuraya to give me free air time, in aid of conservation!!.] Any one that sent questions on various topics I will answer them in the near future…But one of the last comments… Yes the Grevy, not Grevey!,sorry I think I have been spelling it wrong, is being poached and its a very difficult situation because of the tribal fighting, keeps going back wards and forwards over quite a substantial area, and because the Samburu do not kill Grevys, they tend to settle in to safety, start trusting people, and then suddenly the Turkana move into this area, and the Grevy becomes an easy meal… Also of course the Grevys follow the rain like every one else with their stock so tend to get shot if they are in amounst Turkana… Our scouts have been shot at or threatened a few times…As I say its a grave situation, and very difficult to get on top of…And our managers comment is true…If we don’t get the Turkana to understand the situation en mass, we are going to say ‘good bye’ to the Grevys in the Elbarta plains… One of the most well known grevy areas…

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Oct 12 2008 | By: milgistrust

I just keep seeing it over and over again..All I know is that I can’t help but keep thinking that ‘How can people with such pure good tribal beliefs and rules, possibly let them selves get into such an extraordinary problem’… Can’t they see for them selves what the over grazing situation is doing to their land, can’t they see what happens when you burn the forest…Unbelievable irreversible errosion…, terrible 12 feet gullies, large areas with no top soil left, large areas in the mountains that used to be forest, reduced to bear rock… I keep on telling myself maybe its the modern world that we live in that is not helping, nobody is willing to help them selves, because they wait for help from others??…WHY??? Were they doing this 100 years ago?? The other day some women came to ask me for help, because they were were hungry, and their goats are thin, but just a kilometre away was a huge forest fire… I told them I’m sorry I can’t help you if you can’t help yourselves..[ ‘My motto’ you have to be cruel to be kind’ ] I know its either one of your husbands, or sons that has lit the fire… this fire is burning all the trees that saved the day by producing so many seed pods..[ Thanks to Nature, 10/8/08] Its time for the women to gather that ‘inner strength’ and get on top of the problem..

On my last safari we came across many many trees that have been cut down to feed their hungry goats, with absolutely no thought of tomorrow… I saw a film the other day… It was called ‘the tree of life’.. It was about a guy cutting down a tree, in a beautiful forest… The sounds of the cutting disturbed every one around, the animals ran away,and the people just listened, but nobody did any thing… When the tree fell down, the man was so exhausted he collapsed in a heap… When he opened his eyes he found that he was in a desert with nothing… Nothing at all.. When he was trying to find his way out he came across a sapling growing in the desert… He sheltered it with his loin cloth, so as to help it grow… WHY DO WE WAIT UNTIL WE GET TO THIS STAGE BEFORE WE DO ANY THING…I would love to get my hands on that film and show every one in northern Frontier District!

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Sep 09 2008 | By: milgistrust

Yes I’m in the Mara!!, with three of our Samburu people that have worked for us for many years, and one scout from the Milgis Trust, all kindly invited by a Spanish couple who walked to lake Turkana with us last year, with the camels…These four men have heard me ‘go on and on’ about conservation, and looking after what is theres!!.. Our friends from Spain wanted to see the famous migration, [ which we have missed by the way!], and also wanted to see the reaction of our men from the north when they saw this amazing place!!.. Lions all over the place, including two very young cubs!! A leopard trying to sleep on a very thin branch, with its kill well out of danger from any one pinching it above it! Two beautiful cheetahs so relaxed with us, they just turned over and went back to sleep! A porcupine trying to hide behind a piece of grass, then deciding to run for it, gosh they can run fast!! A serval cat catching a guinea fowl!, and to end the day… a herd of Elephants all around the car… and as we were leaving being charged by a little four month old baby … It was too ’sweet’ to be true…And by the way we have not seen another car.. hardly!! The Samburu can not believe there eyes!, they are speechless and in awe, especially this after noon right in front of our camp … 11 lions just skirt around a herd of cows!!.. We’ve got lots of work to do in the Milgis, and what I know is these four guys, will take a very clear message back to the north!!!

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Sep 03 2008 | By: milgistrust

We have had some big fires last month in the Luggas as well, at least 100 Acacia Tortilis trees.. have been lost lost… [please see THANKS to Nature!! to know the value of these fabulous trees] Many were deliberately started by people who said that a leopard/lion had eaten a goat.. What have they achieved by doing this, because the carnivore moved on, and hundreds of dead trees are left?? One big fire, was a ‘mistake’, [actually the one in the bottom picture] in that a hungry traveller had stolen a goat to eat and he had hidden himself well in the thick bush on the side of the lugga, to cook the goat, but unfortunately his fire caught the bush, and he ran for it! Our scouts followed him, but when he threatened to shoot them they left him to go… Others are started by people extracting honey from bee hives, with the excitement of finding honey, they forget to put the fire out that they lit to smoke the bees out..

The elders visited the base to discuss this problem… They are very angry… ‘This burning has to stop’…They announced ‘Good, I’m glad you are now telling me’.. I answered.!! mmmmmm progress!! I feel…. But even better was the punishment for lighting fires!! If and when they catch the perpetrators, and this is usually quite easy as they check the mans tracks, generally every one here knows every one else’s tracks, its incredible!!.. If not they follow them back to the Manyattas [homestead].. What they will now do, is a group of elders will visit the homestead, in the evening and will start choosing goats that he will pay a fine with.. they will choose the best goats!! The fine will depend on how serious the fire was, and how many important trees were burnt!!.. Once he has paid his fine..He then has to throw a huge ’sikuku’ [party], for the community, before the elders will forgive and bless him..

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Sep 01 2008 | By: milgistrust

What a shame a match is such an easy and cheap thing to buy!! The destruction that a raging forest fire does is unimaginable, just a single match… Sometimes hundreds of acres of virgin forest is burnt in the hope that the grass will grow for their cows instead… imagine the repercussions… Well the Samburu are really beginning to see these repercussions… Its another subject that I have talked about until I’m ‘blue in the face’… and felt that I am not being heard… The Northern Ndoto Mountains have been burnt and burnt every dry season… Now the people of Lesirikan, who used to have a flowing river through the town, have to dig deep wells to get to water…When the rains come the flooding is enormous, sometimes washing away ‘bomas’ [ enclosure for livestock ] that have been there for years… Now we have a good example, at least our warning may be heard.!! A pity ‘we’ have to learn the hard way..

The 5 beautiful mountains that are in our Milgis Trust conservation area are like ’steep islands out of a desert’… rising from 3000 up to 8000 feet very quickly. When a fire starts at the bottom, it doesn’t stop until it gets to the top…Its agony to watch… The wind swirls around fuelling the flames…Every thing in its path is destroyed.. We really need money to employ more scouts to try to stop this meaningless destruction… $ 110 per month… Apart from fires the forests on these mountains are still very much in tact…The Samburu take there cows go up there in the dry season, sometimes they cut branches from trees to feed them, they have for years, what we have to be careful with is that these cows do not become too many!

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Aug 25 2008 | By: milgistrust

Just back from a six day camel safari in the Matthews Range… Our first and 5th nights being able to reap the good things that the Milgis Trust has set out to do..promoting co-existence between people, there livestock and wildlife… The first night sleeping out on the Laana Nikan Lugga… There is no way one can describe the feeling when a herd of Elephants are browsing and coming in your direction, with the wind behind them, and you are sleeping in a mosquito net on the ground… It has to get your adrenaline going!!…Can you imagine how big they look, when suddenly the moon disappears from site because he is so close? On the 5th day, a leopard grunting a few meters away from our tents… How fabulous is that….Very Exciting!!…

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Aug 10 2008 | By: milgistrust

Hi every one… I’m back from my safari to Ngurnit!! Beautiful as usual… and even for me exciting!! [ I say this because I’ve been doing walking safaris in northern kenya for 25 years now… Each day I love it more, and learn more!].. I never managed to get to see the Wild dog den as per my last blog, because my little new puppie was too hot!! We had to climb a final mountain to get there and she was already sitting in the shade and asking me to carry her… But I now know were it is and will return!!

What was really interesting on this safari was how nature works things out… unless we ruin it!!… Just when its beginning to get abit dry and the animals are beginning to look thin, the acacia tortilis, [ a beautiful flat topped acacia], drops its load of seed pods, [they look abit like a curly green bean] but not all of them in a night but little by little, when the wind blows… and every single animal that eats ‘vegetable’ goes crazy, from the Elephants to the squirrels.. and of course all the samburus stock.. They call it sagiram, and its extremely nutritious.. Two nights out on safari we heard people coming out with there stock, at 4am so that they could get there first..talking and singing as loud as they could so as to encourage the Elephants to move off.. Again nature working wonders, the Animals then spread the seeds far and wide!….Then we get back to base where the sagiram season is finished, and the Acacias are all in flower, which when they fall to the ground, are also eaten by every thing, which keeps them going untill the rains come!! We hope that will happen soon…As I write this I have just heard thunder rumbling in the west but the wind is VERY strong from the east still..But its getting closer!!.

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Jul 28 2008 | By: milgistrust

What is up in the north?.. or is it every where!!!.. In the last few weeks the scouts have reported seeing 2 white baboon, and then a squirrel, then several reports of white dikdiks and now a superb starling,, and a drongo with a white head! Is it the water, the vegetation or the weather up here?? I remember several years ago seeing a white Wildebeeste in the Mara… amoungst the millions!!.. Interesting…

I do apologise for the pictures of the last two blogs not getting posted… I don’t know what the problem is…We tried several times… I will be leaving for ’safari’ tomorrow to meet our visitors in Ngurnit on the 2nd August.. On the way I am going to meet up with Lesuuda, Milgis 3, our Cheetah.[ all 22 scouts represent an animal]as he has reported, that he has seen a wild dog den, with lots of Puppies…I’m very excited… Will be back with more news on the 7th August…

By the way I have a new puppie… Shes called Ndoto!!…

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Jul 26 2008 | By: milgistrust

There is a lot of talk on the importance of education in the developing world… Many poor communities get these messages and try to believe in them. The people talking about the importance of education however do not assist the communities in finding sources of funds to pay for teachers. Pre schools have mushroomed in almost every village you visit. Some just under a tree, or in some old shack that happens to be there..

In the last two months there has been a dry spell in the north. Because of the extra work load on the families to keep there stock alive, the children tend to get slightly neglected, As an option to escape some parents take their children to school and even some children take themselves there so as to get some food. This gives nursery schools a lot of pressure in terms of space, feeding and teachers. When the rains come some of the children who originally came for food find the school interesting and remain. This keeps the pressure on and almost every month we get requests for assistance to pay for a nursery teachers. It is difficult to ask someone who does not get three meals a day to pay for teachers. With donations of US$ 150 a month we can help pay for three teachers, and help feed the children. Is there any one out there that would like to help??

thank you yours Moses Lesaloyia.. The Milgis Trust manager

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