Kenya by Brian Schofield

It’s unlikely to crop up in any brochure, but if you sit on the right-hand side on the short flight from Nairobi to the Masai Mara National Park, you’ll have the best view of a sight just as memorable as any waterfall or snow-topped mountain: Kibera, reputed to be the largest shanty town in the world, home to 600,000 souls. A rolling vista of tin roofs and narrow mud lanes isn’t the panorama with which one would expect to begin a honeymoon or long-planned adventure on the great African plains, but it serves as the perfect reminder of Kenya’s fingertip hold on the fragile beginnings of prosperity and progress.

And in 2004, more than ever before, you (sitting excitedly, trying to figure out how to focus your binoculars before you reach the reserve) and the bloke on the ground beneath you (trying to scrabble a living selling bags of charcoal on the roadside) are part of the same story. It’s been long accepted that tourism demonstrates ‘trickle-down economics’ – the theory that the spending power of the relatively rich is central to helping the poor – in its most direct and widespread way. But Kenya has spent the last year proving the theory, by demonstrating what happens to a poor, heavily tourism-dependent country when someone turns the tap off.

On November 28, 2002, three men drove a 4WD into the lobby of a hotel in Mombasa, and blew themselves to pieces. When the dust had settled, Kenya wasn’t just facing a human tragedy, but a tourism PR disaster. The British Foreign Office duly placed Kenya on the danger list, and half of the UK’s 500,000 annual visitors took their custom elsewhere. Never knowingly understated, the US State Department gave Kenya the same safety rating as the Chernobyl public baths, and the dollars also dried up. The exact cost of the attacks to Kenya is hard to quantify, but when you consider that travellers with Kuoni, the UK’s largest carrier to the country, were by themselves conferring £21 million upon the national economy in a good year, in airport taxes, souvenir purchases, tips and the like, the scale of the crisis becomes clearer. Picture a Masai elder pointing out sternly from a faded poster – Kenya Needs You.

But that was all last year. As I eavesdrop on a gathering of hoteliers and safari operators meeting in Nairobi, talk is of recovery in 2004, of marketing drives and price promotions, of sorted security and incarcerated bad guys, of full hotels and extra planes. There’s also huge frustration: firstly at the Kenyan government’s campaign to lure back the tourists, which is operating on what is sharply referred to here as ‘Africa time’, and at the failure of other governments, particularly the Americans, to acknowledge that Kenya is not, by any realistic standards, a hotbed of terrorist activity.

Some expound the popular conspiracy theory that while the UK Foreign Office took the soonest opportunity to downgrade its assessment of any danger here, the Americans are retaining their warning until they’re granted permission to dock warships permanently in the strategically helpful Mombasa. As a lowly travel editor, I have no inside sources on Capitol Hill who may or may not agree.

But despite the patches of gloom, the optimism is tangible. Post-SARS Hong Kong and post-Luxor Egypt have established a blueprint for countries turning the tourism tap back on at speed: first, let the world know you’re still here, and that you might be a bit cheaper than usual if people are quick to come back. Second, target the British first, a people whose craven worship of their annual holidays and love of a bargain combines with an innate bloody-mindedness to create the perfect rapid-return tourists.

Anyone unfamiliar with the idea that the benefit can often outweigh the small risk should take that light aircraft flight out from Nairobi and across the Rift Valley to the Mara – the plane might feel as if it’s made of tin-foil and skippered by a teenager, but you wouldn’t miss the views of the sweeping grasslands for anything. Nor could you ever dismiss the chance to land and stay at somewhere as magical as Governor’s Camp. The oldest safari camp in the Mara Reserve, Governor’s has a global reputation for comfort, informality and outstanding game-spotting that would keep the tents booked in almost any circumstances – and rightly so. Within a few hours of landing, we’re lunched, unpacked and driving, via visits to a dozing pride of lions and a family of cheetahs, to witness one of the wonders of the natural world.

There can be few travel experiences more tantalising, more fingernail-destroying, than waiting for a river-crossing. Thousands of wildebeest and zebra gather at the river bank, knowing that the grass really is greener on the other side, but also sensing that the piles of rotting carcasses in the water and the crocodile eyes poking cold from the shallows foreshadow the fate of some of their number, should they make the charge.

One moves forward bravely, head bowed. Others nudge the scout towards the foam, while the watching safari-goers whisper and crane from their trucks. Something moves, the scout gets spooked, and the crossing stalls – and so it goes on, sometimes for days. We sat for three hours beside the Mara river, watching the herd gain and lose its nerve, before sunset turned us homeward, disappointed. Just as we pulled away, the dust kicked up, groans and whinnies filled the air, and the animal avalanche began. The beasts poured across in thrashing columns, hauling themselves up the collapsing bank and sprinting to safety. One zebra leapt to avoid the crashing jaws of a king-size croc; another got snapped by the foot, and lost the slow tug-of-war, disappearing beneath the blood-streaked water. Undoubtedly, no activity could be better suited to the ‘big short-break’ culture than a long-weekend Mara safari. While the overnight flights and compatible time zones made for an easy transfer, the determination at Governor’s to make the best use of every hour of daylight perfectly suits a visitor seeking to cram a pint-size experience into a half-pot of time. I was positively polite to the gentleman who woke me at 5.45am for a game drive, then 5.15 next morning for a balloon flight – what else was I going to do in the Mara? Sleep? Drifting with the wind over a lolloping pair of giraffes, or watching a family of elephants crossing the horizon at dawn – these are the kind of ‘God, I hope I remember this moment’ events that seem to happen here every day.

My favourite early start was the last – for a dawn walking safari, learning the mythologies and myriad uses of the local plant life from a Masai guide, and beginning to understand the movements of the herds and their hunters across the grasslands. Explored on foot, the Great Plains really merit the title.

Taking a stroll in open country with lions, leopards and hyenas in possible attendance also puts the issue of whether Kenya is ‘safe’ into proper perspective. At the time of writing, the Foreign Office has re-opened the flight route from London to Mombasa and has downgraded its assessment to only counselling ‘vigilance’ to those of us who may wish to visit – something of a pre-condition, one would think, in a country where you can hear 800kg hippos rummaging around outside your tent at night. For my part, I felt wonderfully well looked-after, and enormously welcome. I never had the need to give safety a second thought.

Sipping a farewell gin and tonic by a campfire on the jungled banks of the Mara, listening to the unfamiliar birdsong, refreshed by the most complete break with British reality imaginable, it occurred to me that ‘Kenya Needs You’ is only half the story. Perhaps you need Kenya.