If you care about Africa and its people there is a very simple way to help: go
on safari. It was the late Anton Rupert, the South African billionaire
involved in job creation organisations and founder of the Peace Parks
Foundation, who put it in a nutshell: “Jobs,” he told me, “are Africa’s most
pressing need.
For every eight tourists who come, one job is created.” But don’t just go on
any safari – stay in community-owned and run lodges. You’ll be in for one of
the more delightful experiences that Africa has to offer and help transform
the lives of some of the poorest people you’re ever likely to meet.
If you haven’t been on safari before it may come as a surprise that until
fairly recently the safari business was almost exclusively a white people’s
affair.
The paradigm of the old-style safari was that white-owned lodges, run by white
managers with white safari guides, took predominantly white tourists roaming
over the lands long emptied of indigenous people. The local communities were
the bit-part players, carrying the luggage, cooking the food and washing the
clothes.
Today they are gradually moving centre-stage. Many of the lodges have done a
great deal to help the communities surrounding their lodges, training the
people, building schools and hospitals, but now a few lodges are entirely
owned and run by the local communities themselves.
Il Ngwesi, on the Laikipia plateau in Kenya, was one of the first. It was
built by the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, helped by Borana Lodge and the Masai
community. These days it is owned and staffed by the Masai. It has been a
huge success – from everybody’s point of view.
The community loves it; it provides work for more than 40 local people. And
tourists love it – new-style travellers feel cheated if they come to Africa
and don’t have any meaningful connection with the people. They want
adventure, but they also want some insight into the history and stories of
the land.
Not far from Il Ngwesi is Tassia, which is run by the Mukogodo Masai. Guests
spend their entire time with their Masai hosts and are fed by them, track
game with them, follow migratory elephant, and go on game drives or camel
treks and can pay visits to local Masai villages.
In Northern Kenya, close to the Matthew mountains, is Sarara Camp, owned by
the Samburu community and managed by third-generation white Kenyans Piers
and Hilary Bastard. People, domestic cattle and wildlife all share the land.
Coming upon the brilliantly clad Samburu wandering through the bush with
their cattle, as the lions roam and the elephants trumpet, makes an
unforgettable sight.
In South Africa in Madikwe, a newish game reserve on the western border with
Botswana, two examples of these community-owned enterprises have recently
opened; they are comfortable, sophisticated and beautifully looked after.
Madikwe Game Reserve is what you might call a miracle. It is 75,000ha of hot,
dry country and until 1991 consisted of impoverished farmers trying to eke
out a living in inhospitable country from which most of the wildlife had
vanished.
These days more than 60 mammal species roam the land, and lion, elephant,
giraffe, buffalo and countless antelope can regularly be seen. The great
grey shapes of rhino, both black and white, loom frequently through the bush
and there are at least two packs of wild dogs – one of Africa’s most
endangered but most fascinating species.
Madikwe has countless lodges, mostly privately owned, but Buffalo Ridge, on
its far western border, is owned by the Balete Ba Lekgophung community and
Thakadu River Camp, near the eastern border, by the surrounding Molatedi
village. Talk to the people who run it, to the managers and the cooks, the
drivers and the waitresses, and you begin to get under the skin of the new
South Africa. You learn about their lives, of how life used to be and how
the tourist lodge is giving them new hope and meaning – and above all, work.
You also learn about what partnerships can do – “We didn’t have a clue how to
run an operation like this,” admits Godfrey Rampo, a ranger and assistant
manager, “but The Nature Workshop (a South African organisation that helps
local people with eco-tourism projects) came to show us how to do it and now
almost all the staff come from the community and though we don’t yet make a
profit, 10 per cent of our turnover goes to the community.” Other lodges in
The Madikwe Collection also helped to raise money and passed on their
expertise.
The rooms are as comfortable as any five-star lodge. There are beautiful views
and huge bathrooms and showers, vast beds and the sort of service that we
spoiled tourists have come to expect. On game drives you get guides for whom
this part of the world is home and who seem to know every bush and flower;
you get a genuinely African take on the wildlife experience. Moremi, our
guide at Buffalo Ridge, has quite another, rather more poetic, take on the
Buffalo Thorn bush from the traditional Afrikaner story usually meted out
(which is that it is called “Stay-a-while” because it catches on your
clothes).
“The Buffalo Thorn,” Moremi says, “is sent with the body of someone who dies
away from home – the curved thorn hooks his spirit to make sure it isn’t
lost and the straight one leads the way home.” These lodges offered a charm
that tugged at the heartstrings. But, as Nicky Fitzgerald, wife of the CEO
of Conservation Corporation Africa, said: “Anybody can build a lodge – it’s
getting people to come that is the problem.”
She is right. These lodges need visitors. Singita Ebony, with its wonderful
rooms overlooking the Sand River, is a wonderful place to spend a few days.
But it is expensive, costing £600 per night per person.
Go to the community lodges for the wildlife – there’s plenty of it – but also
to experience Africa in a new way, to help people turn a dream into reality.
Need to know
Kenya lodges: Tassia (www.tassiakenya.com),
£160; Il Ngwesi (www.ilngwesi.com),
£200; Sarara (www.lewa.org/sarara),
£225. Prices are per person per night. Journeys by Design (01273 623790, www.journeysbydesign.com)
has a six-night private safari staying at Tassia, Il Ngwesi and Sarara,
including international and private charter flights and full board, from
£2,950pp.
South Africa lodges: Buffalo Ridge Safari Lodge and Thakadu River Camp (www.madikwecollection.com)
are both from £130; Singita Ebony (www.singita.com)
is £560. Cazenove & Loyd (020-7384 2332, www.cazenoveandloyd.com)
has two nights each at Buffalo Ridge, Thakadu River Camp and Singita Ebony
from £3,334pp, including flights.
