Kajiado, Kenya – KAJIADO, Kenya (AP) — Less than a kilometer from where I live this year, a lion killed a girl named Peace Mwende. This news hit me hard: she was 14 years old, the same age as my youngest daughter, and the lioness responsible may have been one of the animals we see in our area almost weekly.
Our children are growing up in some part Nairobi where lions roam freely. We see them when we take our children to school. We lost pets and livestock. Neighborhood WhatsApp groups are sharing warnings when big cats come close and showing CCTV footage of lions preying on pets.
This is a headache for the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), which is tasked with ensuring the safety of people who share space with wild animals, as well as protecting wildlife, especially endangered species. KWS estimates there are “just over 2,000” lions left in Kenya.
“During the rainy season, tall grass and the changing lifestyle of herbivores make it difficult for predators to hunt,” KWS wrote in a video about the rescue of a lion cub in Nairobi, posted on social media in July. In the video, the cub was seen starving in the park, sparking a public outcry. KWS added that it is “carrying out feeding activities, providing daily meat to the pride living in the park to help them regain their strength and resume natural hunting.”
Nairobi National Park, which borders the city to the north, has long used the vast grasslands in the south to migrate its wildlife to other protected areas. As these areas are rapidly being converted into residential and industrial development, Kenya's government wildlife department has announced a nearly $5 billion plan to create a migration zone. corridor between Nairobi and the reserves in the south. There are also non-governmental initiatives that pay landowners bordering Nairobi National Park a small annual fee to keep their property free from wildlife.
But will this be enough?
What's missing is more awareness of how to behave around predators, especially among the increasingly urban communities that come into contact with them.
My kids never learned this in school. Their closest encounter with a lion came in 2020, when we took advantage of the post-COVID slump in orders to show them Masai Mara National Reserve. An incredibly knowledgeable local guide took us through the southern reserve in a fully open safari vehicle, surrounded by rampaging wildebeest.
During one of our walks, our guide stopped the car in front of a trio of hunting lionesses passing by. The first one passed by, not paying attention to us. The second one looked like she was about to walk behind the car, but was distracted by the glint of the seat belt buckle my daughter was absentmindedly playing with. The lioness stopped, turned around to look, and then walked towards us. Reaching her head towards my child, she sniffed the buckle before clamping it between her teeth. My daughter sat motionless, about ten inches from the lioness's head, which suddenly seemed incredibly huge.
“Don’t move,” the guide muttered under his breath. “Don't move. Don't make a sound.”
Having satisfied her curiosity, the lioness dived under the car and moved on.
That day we learned a lesson about predatory behavior during a vacation that few Kenyans can afford. This may have saved my wife's life recently when she encountered a lioness in our garden. While checking to see what our dog was barking at, she spotted a lioness under a bush less than 10 yards away. Only his head was visible.
“No sudden movements,” she muttered to herself, remembering our guide. “Don't make a sound.” She walked slowly and silently back towards the house until she was close enough to the front door to run and tell us all what happened.
I have covered conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Gaza and Syria and regularly received hostile environment training to ensure maximum security. I decided to build my house in nature.
But here I find myself on a different front line.
In December 2019, a man named Simon Kipkirui traveled to Tuala, a small village across the river from us. He decided, against the advice of his friends, to walk home at night. He never managed to do this. He lived in our village; he helped build our house and plant many of the trees that now form the native forest that surrounds our house.
I called his brother and the group followed in his footsteps. Nothing. Two more days passed before his brother Daniel Rono discovered a bag of cornmeal lying in the wilderness between our house and Tuala. He explored.
“I reached for the cornmeal and saw Simon's head. It was separated from his body. I reached for the head and saw a hand and then a foot inside a rubber boot,” Daniel recalls. Horrified, he called me. As we began the grisly task of finding Simon's remains, we were startled by a warning growl. It was a male lion, still guarding his prey.
At this point, Simon had been missing for two and a half days. No one knows if the lion that was with him at the time we found him was responsible for his death. Lions that kill humans – notorious man-eaters – are shot to prevent similar events from happening again, and KWS claims to have shot the lioness that killed Peace Mwende on the night of that attack.
Although human-wildlife conflict has been around for as long as humanity has existed, attacks by predators are likely to increase as Kenyan lions have less space and hunting opportunities. This could only mean the death of the world-famous Nairobi National Park, which some already want to turn into residential development.
I mourn Simon, as do friends and colleagues who died in the line of duty in Sierra Leone and Afghanistan. Every lion sighting still fills me with joy and wonder, despite the horrors of that day in 2019. I hope that solutions are found that keep both people and lion populations safe, and that this wonderful wildlife that makes Nairobi such a unique capital survives for the joy and wonder of many others.
___
Khaled Kazziha, assistant news director for The Associated Press in Nairobi, has covered Africa since 1998.
