Last of the Lion Hunters
Last of the Lion Hunters
Kenya owes China 107.42b Shillings. It has loned African countries the equivalent of $73b for infrastructure projects like the Madaraka Express; a train line that runs through Nairobi National Park. Supposedly, park rangers had to keep lions from attacking the Chinese workforce.
Giraffe move into a vast new burn site said by tour drivers to have been created when a Chinese tourist dropped a cigarette, although it’s also said that park rangers do this to freshen up the ground for next year’s grazing. Thousands of prey animals do this so they can see threats more easily.
Last of the Lion Hunters
Stark colours splashed occasionally in a grand bleakness of vastly unequal development.
Last of the Lion Hunters is photographed on the road from Maasai Mara National Reserve, through Narok city (the Maasai Mara capital), to Nairobi City.
Jackson is a night watchman. He keeps Lions, Hyenas and Elephants away from newly built tourist glamping tents. Walking many hours from his village, he sits by his fire each night, making water hot for their showers in the morning.
Drivers are pushed by their clients to get close to animals. Cars are supposed to stay 50 meters from animals at all times, with no more than five cars per animal. Even then they are instructed to only stay for five to ten minutes.
To become a Maasai Mara warrior, David had to be the first to spear a male Lion and bring him down. Now he drives tourists round the ‘Big Five’ at the Maasai Mara National Reserve. He wishes to be a park ranger and help with conservation of the animals.
‘We don’t know how to keep money but we do know how to keep cattle’ - Jackson. Along the road at sunrise and sunset, children move the cattle from pens to grazing. In the summer the children go to school and the adults take up the reins.
David had to make a dowery payment of cattle to marry his first wife. He says he won’t take another right now because he’s ‘…concentrating on his first wife’.
