I was recently training a group of international researchers, and a Kenyan delegate approached me and said I should save the Mau Forest. I sighed, and reminisced to when I had visited the Mau complex as an inquisitive backpacker in 2005, being advised through EcoTerra International, who devote a website to the history and culture of the  Ogiek. It was the latter I had hoped to meet, one of the rare cultures of people becoming wiped off the face of the earth by the rise of centralised global society. Because of the strife, researchers have been reluctant to enter Mau. Even I found it difficult when there myself, trying to move around without garnering the attention of charcoal burners and other squatters. When I approached university lecturers who were authorities on African forest conservation, they shied away from Mau due to political issues. Other researchers more familiar with Kenya preferred to work in the Aberdares as they were similar to Mau, and contained a fenced off national park. But the Aberdares do not have an indigenous community traditionally managing the landscape. After a machete attack on an Ogiek elder in September 2005 and fallings out with the domineering environmental conservation organization Ecoterra, even I stopped pursuing these goals to concentrate on projects in other parts of Africa that could guarantee success.

Representatives of rural development NGOs visited at the same time as I did were amazingly hung-up on the non-westernization of the people living around the Mau, which I thought distracted from issues that would provide more effective help.

Ecoterra allegedly meets with tribal elders of the Ogiek and fights their cause, but as they seem to function as a political exposure group, work and investment on the ground is not readily observable. And now the Kenyan government is stepping in to evict the residents of the Mau. The frightening thing is that they are also removing Ogiek. Working out what is really happening up there is truly difficult. The one Ogiek I worked with monopolised my interaction with the rest of the community to raise his own status, and he consistently lied about what was going on. My progress here was therefore non-existant.

One might say, “So what? Kenya still has lots of protected areas, with forests at Kakamega, Mount Elgon, Arubuko Sokoke, Mount Kenya and the Aberdare National Park right next to Mau”. First of all, this is a very naïve, archaic view of managing forested lands, akin to the colonial fortress concept of national parks. These old concepts are being increasingly corrected to take into account living landscapes, and the services provided by ecosystems. Mau has one of the largest forests in East Africa, and affects a broad array of water sources. With Kenya already undergoing water crises, the loss of this forest could exasperate this crisis. Loosing the forest would dramatically affect not only water availability, but the run off from the erosion would potentially damage the water quality, biodiversity and even fisheries in the catchment areas.

If we loose the Mau Forest, we will not only loose the biodiversity and ecosystem services held within, we will also loose the useful knowledge of the Ogiek and how they manage and interact with their landscape. Globally, human beings are becoming victims of their own success: understanding how we can reconcile with the land and its biodiversity is paramount.  Societies like the Ogiek can help us do that. In these times of modern, global perspectives, protecting the Mau forest will also allow forests to exist to buffer against climate change. There is another lesson to be learned from the Ogiek: the use of medicinal plants from the forest to cure diseases, not just in Kenya, but around the world.

It is not all gloom, things are somewhat starting to look up. There have been some valiant, successful efforts to empower the Ogiek using participatory mapping of traditional land . While many of the larger conservation organizations are not getting involved, the Kenyan government is asking for substantial funding from the UN to protect the Mau Forest. On this note, success is not guaranteed. The Kenyan government has still not recognised the need to protect the Mau with the Ogiek in it (unless I’ve missed something). Once this has been achieved, great things will be possible. It’s a long shot, but not a lost cause.

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