The Mail on Sunday July 1, 2001

  Animal Crackers: Steven Venables sees the wildlife of Kenya at its most - and least - exploited.

My first ever trip to Kenya had been a shivering trial of cramped tents, muddy bogs and icy mountains. This time it was to be quite a different: a low-altitude family holiday, looking at animals lounging on the beach and soaking up the sun.

Best of all, we were going to visit Eselenkei. Pronounced 'Selengay', this newly opened wildlife conservation area had promised to be rather different from the standard game park experience. I also had a personal interest because the project is a unique collaboration between local Maasai tribes and my bother-in-law, Jake Grieves-Cook.

There was one slight snag; this January the dry season turned out to be a wet season. Instead of golden savannah we found flooded green fields as we flew into Nairobi. So Eselenkei's remote game tracks were given a week to dry out while we explored other parts of the country first.

For my wife Rosie, who grew up in Kenya, it was one long nostalgia feast. For our seven year old son Edmond everything was new - from Uncle Jake's house in a tea plantation to the Maasai odd job man who had killed nine lions in his youth.

After a day's acclimatisation with the Grieves-Cooks, we began our travels. First we headed north to lake Naivasha, staying 2 nights at the Rift Valley Lodge. This is volcanic country and the highlight for me was not Naivasha but the much smaller Crater Lake nearby. Secluded in a textbook caldera, it is an enchanted emerald sanctuary, fringed with acacia trees full of black and white Colubus monkeys. The famous gorge at Hell's Gate was grander, with vultures wheeling over its huge basalt cliffs.

Back in Nairobi, the local agent Gamewatchers Safaris, had now organised our trip to the Masai Mara to see a conventional game-watching set-up before going on to Eselenkei.

Getting there was effortlessly efficient with Air Kenya: 50 minutes after leaving Nairobi our twin-engined plane touched down in the middle of nowhere, where we were met by a four-wheel drive vehicle and whisked off to the Mara Voyager lodge for lunch.

Our bedrooms were simple but comfortable. The swimming pool was admirably discreet. The food was excellent, served on a terrace overlooking the Mara River - stunningly beautiful, with hippotamuses making noises 'like disgusting old men' as Rosie and Edmond put it.

The main activity was the 'game drive', a sort of zoological train spotting with zealous drivers competing to get the best scores for their clients. Our man was more sensitive. While hugely knowledgeable and enthusiastic he didn't crowd the animals. He delighted in our own sightings of the unexpected - like the tiny marsh terrapin clambering through unseasonally sodden grass.

I just wondered about the relentless gouging of all those four-wheel drives ploughing their way through the soft earth. Was this the unavoidable price of saving wildlife?

Much as I enjoyed the Mara, it did remind me slightly of Longleat - all those animals standing around so obligingly, posing for their photos. It was all very different, a few days later at Eselenkei. For a start, there was only one vehicle and it stuck to its prescribed track.

We were the only people there. The animals lurked shyly in the bushes and, when you did catch a glimpse of the exquisitely elegant lesser kudu antelope, it had all the spontaneous, serendipitous thrill of discovery. Even the ubiquitous giraffe kept their distance. But, best of all, we had the satisfaction of knowing that local people were benefiting directly from our gawping.

Africa's modern conflict between man and animal is a complex, highly charged subject. As for the specific problems of the Maasai people - their loss of territory and subsequent disenchantment with wildlife parks - huge tomes have debated the subject.  Some blame the British colonialists; others point to problems since independece. Whatever the precise causes, a situation has arisen where the Maasai's traditional pastoral way of life no longer coexists happily with wildlife.

Ever bigger herds of cattle, concentrated into dwindling territories, put an unbearable strain on the land.  Add to that the temptation to sell out to agriculturalists, in a country where the human population has grown 3 million to 30 million in the past 50 years, and the outlook for wild animals is very bleak.

Jake Grieves-Cook has always been passionate to the point of obsession about Kenya's wildlife. For years he dreamed of creating safe havens on the edge of the national parks, effectively extending the habitat for game.  But he knew that landowners need financial incentives to protect their wildlife. In the case of the Kisongo Maasai tribe, who own the Eselenkei group ranch close to Mount Kilimanjaro, it required three years of negotiating before a deal was struck.

The group ranch committee has set aside 50 square miles - seven per cent of their total land holdings - as a conservation area for wildlife, agreeing to keep their cattle off it except in severe drought. In return Grieves-Cook's company, Porini Ecotourism, pays the community an annual rent for leasing the land and the salaries of local staff. Visiting tourists provide Porini's income. Porini is Swahili for 'in the wilds' and an acronym for Protection of Resources (Indigenous & Natural) for Income.

While every operator loves to call himself ecotourist-friendly, here the label is genuine, because only a maximum of eight guests are allowed into the area at any time.

We were met in Nairobi by the camp managers, who drove us on the three hour journey to Eselenkei. Two local game wardens stood guard at the gates in smart new uniforms. The camp itself was hidden discreetly among the trees and, for someone accustomed to mountain bivouacs, it all seemed very luxurious.

Our bedroom 'tent' was the size of a small house with comfortable double beds and adjoining plumbed bathroom (gravity-fed shower heated by charcoal fire). An excellent lunch was served under the trees by the resident staff, all from local villages and all dressed by choice in traditional Maasai robes and jewellery.

With the manager translating, I asked Mpapa Olekotiaki what he made of it all. His first job in the conservation area was to help clear the vehicle tracks. Then he was elected head man at the newly opened camp - all very different from his traditional way of life.

Between the ages of 18 and 25 he had been a 'moran' a warrior, proving himself with acts of daring, including the obligatory skirmish with lions while herding cattle. Today, when he returns to his 'manyatta' - his village enclosure - he still helps with the herd but he is not dependent solely on his cattle. 'What about his children?'  I asked. He is happy to teach them not to hunt animals because alive, they represent income for the community.

What about the weird 'wazungu' - the white people who come 7,000 miles to stare at the animals?  He wasn't too concerned about our motives: what mattered was that we brought money so that he doesn't have to sell all his cattle and he can buy medicines and education for his children. Funds from Porini had also repaired a village borehole for desperately needed water.

The animals, as I said, were shy. The two-night Porini pckage includes a visit to the nearby Amboseli National Park, where the full-on spectacle is virtually guaranteed. Having already had our game fix in the Mara we chose to stay in Eselenkei.

In any case, for me it is not the big, dangerous mammals but the birds which are most exciting. Living in a cat-infested English suburb where sighting a lone blackbird is a major event, I thrill to the birdsong of Africa.

At Eselenkei the dawn chorus is truly deafening, as the Von der Decken's hornbill vies with the Kori bustards and Yellow-necked Spurfowl for the biggest screech. But it's not just the noise: African birds are so gloriously colourful compared with the drab, tweedy little numbers we have in Britain. We were in twitcher heaven.

On the first evening while Edmond remained in camp, Rosie and I were driven for a 'sundowners' bottle of Chardonnay looking out over an endless tree-studded plain ringed by distant hills.

In the morning Douglas took me out at dawn to see the snows of Kilimanjaro glow violet in the brightening sky.

Later we all went for a walk with the reserve manager, Emmanuel, who showed Edmond Maasai medicinal plants. That night we drove out with the spotlight to see nocturnal birds and various large cats, including the beautifully spotted serval.

We had almost returned to camp when we heard the lions. They don't roar. It is an altogether deeper, spookier, hollower sound, wonderfully chilling in the darkness. Then we saw them in the spotlight - two huge lionesses slinking past, yellow eyes turning to stare disdainfully at the intruders.

Although I would have loved to stay longer at Eselenkei no Kenyan holiday is complete without a spell on the Indian Ocean. We went to the island of Lamu, flying once again with Air Kenya. From the airstrip a motor launch whizzed us along the mangrove-lined channel to the isolated beach hotel at Kipungani.

We all adored Kipungani because it was the antithesis of the standard beach resort. There is no canned entertainment. The little salt water swimming pool requires minimal chlorine and is mercifully free of gizmos like wave machines. The buildings are all constructed by local craftsmen from renewable materials. The only concessions to modern luxury are extremely comfortable beds with mosquito nets, generous piles of cushions, attractive furniture, electric lights and plumbed bathrooms.

We ate fresh local produce - crab the first night, giant prawns the second and lobster for our final dinner - all beautifully cooked and accompanied by a good selection of wines.

The staff, mainly from Kipungani village, are courteous and efficient. The managers, Louis and Mary-Jo van Ardt, have an infectious, refreshingly eccentric enthusiasm for the place.

It is not often that your hotel manager encourages you to climb up a palm tree to get your own coconuts.

One day Mary-Jo took us into Lamu town, to see the magnificent Swahili houses with their coral stucco walls, carved doorways and 18^th Century plumbed bathrooms.

The next morning Louis took the boat out to an offshore reef, where we swam with dolphins. On the final day we ambled through the mangrove forest to Kipungani village, where the newly renovated primary school gleans white beside a stately mango tree.

Kipungani lies on the south-west corner of Lamu island facing back west to the low shore of the African continent. So it is almost unique among East African beaches in having a sunset. While we were there, low tide fell at evening so we could watch the great congregation of wader birds strutting on the shore - everything from tiny plovers to the giant, gawky, yellow-billed storks.

Then a huge, outrageously red sun would sink with ridiculous speed beneath the equatorial horizon, to be followed almost immediately by black, black sky and stars so bright that their reflection shimmered on the water.

The only sound was the rattle of palm fronds and I began to understand why beach holidays can be so special - at least in a place like Kipungani.