Kenya Vision 2030

Does Kenya need Vision 2030, its strategic plan for the next 23 years? Or would 2020 vision be more useful?

From Thursday's "Business Daily" in Nairobi. . . .
"Repositioning of the Coast Circuit, opening under-utilised parks and providing niche products have been unveiled as the key drivers towards the government achieving Vision 2030 through the tourism sector. The strategy aims at making Kenya one of the top 10 long haul tourist destinations, offering diverse and high end experiences by 2012 to a target five million tourists."

Five million tourists by 2012? That's some target, when just over a million visited in 2006. The article goes on to say that roads are a problem. And if their figures are right, they will continue to be, as the story quotes Ksh3million having been allocated to road repairs on access roads to tourist sites. That's a bit more than £20,000 ($40,000) which, even on Kenya's famously low wages (£1–2, or $2–4 a day is about the level manual workers and hotel staff can expect) won't go very far. As Tourism Concern's "Behind the Smile: The Tsunami of Tourism" showed, Kenya's success as a tourist economy depends on unsustainable levels of exploitation of some of the world's poorest people.

Maybe proper labour laws are a separate issue. A good start would be finishing the Nairobi to Mombasa highway (the photo here was taken by the front passenger while we were driving towards Nairobi. . .).

With Kenya's weather, and the sort of rains that are now common, roads are going to need repairing more and more frequently. So how about building a brand-new, high-speed, wide-gauge line linking Mombasa with Nairobi and Kampala – a futuristic railway running oversize rolling stock – from the Indian Ocean across the Rift Valley to central Africa, perhaps carrying 3000 passengers and freight. This could serve as a blueprint for the future of mass transportation in similarly suitable environments. Compared with building the same line in Europe, construction costs on much of the low-population-density route would be minimal; exports would boom; the tourists would come; the wildlife and the environment would be preserved; and Kenya would once again have an asset to be proud of, running alongside its famous, nineteenth-century “lunatic line”.

Just a thought.

Gallery's vigango no longer for sale?

A sign of the times?

A prominent Boston gallery has removed most indications that it's selling a collection of Vigango (Mijikenda memorial posts). The nine (out of an original twelve) posts were being sold for between $1000 and $4500 each. It will be interesting to see when the gallery judges the coast is clear once more to advertise them.

Meanwhile, it's down to Mijikenda communities themselves to decide whether they want to allow these objects to be sold out of their traditional context for a few hundred shillings, or maintained in situ for the benefit of the community. It might be a good idea to start carving and "aging" some replicas for sale as decorative items in Europe and the US. There's obviously a demand.

Mijikenda grave posts returned

It's a tragedy how many of these vigango memorial posts have ended up in galleries and private collections in European and North American cities and a positive step that some are being returned.

Let's hope these posts were honestly acquired and properly paid for. The money involved isn't insignificant – the proceeds from any one of these sales would have a transformative impact on the future prospects of the Mijikenda family it came from. Unfortunately, without proper authentification and ownership papers, it's more likely that the original owners/guardians/relatives had nothing to do with the removal of what are the equivalent of cemetery headstones. Hard to believe owning one could bring anyone happiness. . .

Would you run here?

We didn't run at Il Ngwesi, but we were quite happy to walk here, through the thick bush, with our American friends, and our six kids aged 10 to 18. We knew about the Wendy Martin attack, and we saw elephants. We did have two armed guards with us, but we never worried at all about any danger. And if an enraged elephant had suddenly appeared, I don't think any of us would expected our guards to offer an absolute guarantee of protection. They've been going out daily for years, the Wendy Martin incident was a 1 in 3000 chance. Bad things do happen. And actually, if there was no risk at all, if walking through the bush in Africa was no more dangerous than sitting in your front room watching David Attenborough on the flat screen, then part of the thrill and excitement would be missing. Knowing there's a tiny chance, albeit very remote, that something like this might happen is part of the experience.

And that seems to be the overwhelming – surprisingly overwhelming – opinion of Scotsman readers, too. Nearly all of them are I think going too far in the other direction. The fact is, walking around Il Ngwesi genuinely isn't as dangerous as people who haven't been there might think. Accidents like Wendy Martin's are incredibly rare. Like swimming, horse-riding or cycling, walking in the bush in Kenya just isn't risk-free. But, again, it would be a tragedy for thousands of local Maasai if this court case closed down Il Ngwesi.

Do the Maasai have insurance against elephant attack?

It was a terrible accident and I hope Lewa and its supporters have the funds to meet their legal responsibilities. But even if the final settlement is much less than the £800,000 that the Mail speculates might be paid in compensation for the terrible injuries suffered by Wendy Martin, a tourist gored by an elephant while out running at Il Ngwesi lodge (with no armed guard to accompany her) seven years ago. . . Even if the final settlement is half that, it must risk jeopardising the future of one of Kenya's – probably the world's – best examples of community conservation and eco-tourism working harmoniously and bringing huge benefits to a community of traditional herders numbering more than 5000 people in one of the poorest parts of Africa. I think Wendy Martin has a case – she should have been more carefully protected – but it would be a tragedy if it brought renewed suffering to people who have had very rough ride from drought and livestock rustling over the last few decades. Needless to say, nobody ever offers compensation to the local Maasai when somebody from their community is injured by a wild animal.

This certainly does. . .

It's hard to imagine today's explosion had any connection with Mungiki. Some Islamic extremist cell seems more likely. Either way, in terms of Kenya's reputation and any impact on tourism, this morning's bomb is likely to be far more damaging. As is tacitly acknowledged by the FCO who had advice up very quickly. Sensibly, they haven't changed their overall level of advice for Kenya. Nobody should be dissuaded from visiting by this random blast.

Does this have an impact on tourism?

The Mungiki murders and police shootings will leave a lot of people outside Kenya confused – these events are hardly headline news in Europe or North America. Yet.

Unlike an accident involving visitors, or the rare murder of a tourist, there's seen to be little of news value in killings of Africans by Africans. The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office travel advice pages have nothing to say.

President Kibaki's typically clumsy warning to Mungiki sect members – "We will get you" – smacks of desperation. It's resulted in a chaotic bloodbath and, from the POV of the news agenda, is only a couple of quiet-Iraq days away from setting Kenya's tourist industry back once again.

That would be a disaster. These events shouldn't have any impact on tourists visiting the country and visitors shouldn't feel threatened. But for people who are perhaps thinking of going to Kenya for the first time, well, it doesn't look good, does it?

What the hell is going on in Mathare?

Yet again, Kenya's police bring shame and scorn on the country, with the mass shootings of more than thirty "suspected members of Mungiki" in the tight-knit slum community of Mathare Valley to the northeast of the city centre. Nairobi police have lost colleagues in recent days, savagely murdered by these protectionist racketeers. But now they have lost control: their response, as so often, is out of all proportion and has inevitably included individuals who were at most peripheral and at worst just unlucky bystanders.

Mungiki's violent coercion and ritualistic beheadings have caused widespread terror in some of the poorest communities in the Nairobi area: when the police wade in and outdo them, blood for blood, with no respect for human rights or the badges they wear, they lose all credibility.

Police commissioner Ali should call off his trigger-happy rabble and conduct an immediate enquiry.

Rough Guide to Kenya online

You can check out the Rough Guide to Kenya online – there are large chunks of the content of the latest edition available online at the Rough Guides website. There are plenty of links here, too – very useful for making bookings. It's not the same as looking through the book, maybe a couple of hundred pages rather than 700. But it gives a good flavour of what the guide contains. Let me know what you think.

Lamu's safe

For now. The oil exploration that's been going on near the archipelago for decades seems to have reached another
inconclusive end . But the drillers will probably be back as long as Kenya's fuel needs aren't being met by expensive imported crude or alternative technologies.

Meanwhile, Lamu faces a more imminent danger from being caught in the crossfire of the self-perpetuating war on terror. As British, US and Kenyan authorities cooperate to detain alleged supporters of Somali jihadists, who were caught fleeing from Somalia at Kiunga, just up the coast, the island is now clearly on radar screens that it would prefer not to be. Fortunately, Lamu's expression of Islam has always been one that welcomed foreigners, and with hundreds of tourists, including US Peace Corps volunteers, present at all times in the delightful warren of alleys that makes up Lamu town, there won't be any muttonheaded US aerial bombardments here – unlike on the Somali border where livestock and innocent people were killed as the Americans tried to nail the alleged perpetrators of the 1998 embassy bombings.

Inaccurate hotel descriptions. . . oops.

Pierre Oberson of Kijani House Hotel in Shela, Lamu, has emailed to point out that the hotel isn't properly described in the new edition. Which is a pity as Pierre emailed with updates and Kijani was visited for this edition. But somehow in the conversion from research notes to edited text to laid out page. . .Well, mistakes happen and this blog is one way of correcting them. In fact, Pierre reminds me that he's Swiss, not French (!), that the standard rooms were improved several years ago and that the phrase "not as luxurious as you might imagine" is exactly how we described Kijani in the last edition, which does seem kind of casual . . Shela is so beautiful anyway, everything is a bit relative - it's certainly a delightful hotel, and I'm glad at least we mentioned the pools and garden. Also, they have a new website address, though the old one still works. The rather misty-looking Google Earth image shows the whole of Shela and Lamu beach stretching away to the west. I want to be there, now. . .














If anyone notes other inaccuracies in hotel listings, please do let me know.