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Apocalpse now: Hacking the end of Eden

The very question that is now haunting every stranger face in Kenya, ‘Who are you?’ The cop in civvies is now flicking through my passport and my drivers next to me with his driving licence. ‘What are you doing here?’ I have an answer, several answers. They seem ok, because now the man next to the wheel says, ‘Hope you enjoy your stay in Kenya.’

He smiles but I feel a shiver. The driver is relieved. Something has changed since I last came to Kenya a year ago. The Westgate terrorist strike of 21 September 2013 by the Al Shabab (the Somali movement of striving youth), which left 64 dead. All across Nairobi 2.4 million Somalis are now under the scanner. Eastleigh, a small pocket where Somalis live and now often called Little Mogadishu, is emptying out every day. Somali businesses shutting down, many are going back. To be a Somali in Kenya is now manifestly a problem. The stain of complicity with the terror machine of Al Shabab is all over every Somali in Kenya.

If you are not Black what are you doing here? If you are White or a muzungu what you doing here? The Al Shabab supremo Ahmed Abdi Godane is a Swedish-Somali militant with a bounty of seven million dollars on his head by the US. When he speaks he does not mince his words, heading a band of 7-10,000 fighters Godane has survived several Hunter Drone attacks. Linked with the Al Qaeda, his outfit is now the target of the Kenyan Defence Forces which is now part of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) as Kenya has joined the war in Somalia to prop up the fragile government. When Kenya began to feel the pinch of spending $2,33,000 per month to keep its 20,000 soldiers fed in this war, they put their hands up and joined AMISOM so that at least they paid for it.

Godane said in a broadcast in May 2014, ‘We will be shifting the war to Kenya. We will take the war to their doorstep, if they kill a Somali girl, we kill a Kenya girl.’

Kenya’s war on the Al Shabab since 2011 has cost them dearly as they have lost 800 men. But more importantly they have lost the golden bird of tourism. Dark shadows have started to gather over Eden. Its safaris, its white beaches off the coast of Diani, Malindi and Lamu have gone dead. The USA and UK have issued travel advisories to tell its people to stay off Kenya.

Karen Broham, the marketing director for Phoenix Aviation, says they are almost packing up. The biggest UK operators have stopped flying till 2015 as they know Kenya is now a ‘no go’ place. From her window I glimpse the sleeping birds, planes waiting to take off into a magical safari lying dead. She says the fabled Masai Mara is down to 75 per cent. Since Westgate, Kenyan tourism is taking the biggest knock ever.

The Serena Hotels group, the biggest hotel chain in Africa, is reporting massive room cancellations. One of their top media heads told me, ‘We are hoping India or China will help us through’. With China having emerged as the world’s biggest traveller, outpacing the US and Germany, she told me that the hotel staff are busy learning how to serve chopsticks and say namaste with an Indian shake of the head as they serve veggie food. China since 2007 is Africa’s biggest trading partner but has cleverly stayed out of the Somali war. They are not flying the MQ -9 Reaper Drones to hunt Godane. They are just here to do business, eat with chopsticks, travel in buses and watch the big game.

According to Howard French, author of China’s Second Continent, one million Chinese are now in Africa. It is also true that ever since their entry ivory poaching has gone up and the elephants and rhinos of Kenya are in danger.

With the Al Shabab striking at will and the muzungu white tourist going away and Kenya struggling to save the elephant from poachers darkness is settling over the Garden of Eden. They say behind every elephant carcass there is a Chinese hand; they say the Chinese love to eat with ivory chopsticks and believe that rhino horn is better than Viagra.

No wonder, questions of identity began to swirl in my head as I watched the police car drift into the busy traffic near Diamond Plaza. If I am not a tourist then what am I doing here?

This is no place for a stranger now. Kenya may be becoming a dangerous place until they pull out
of Somalia and put a stop to the relentless poacher. According to the latest reports, Godane on 1st September 2014 has been killed in a US. AGM-114 Hellfire missile attack across the border in Somalia. Does it then imply that Kenya will be put on a watch again? As Al Shabab seeks revenge for the death of its leader?

Doesn’t it look like a lot of unanswered questions for the new premier Uhuru Kenyatta?
It’s about an hour on a bus shuttle to Namanga, the border where you cross from Kenya into Tanzania. Its 8 am and I feel a sharp sting in the air. As I sink into sleep I am aware on either side of the African wilderness, the hummocky green hills, the endless range of mountains, the sense of an unending place called Tanzania.

And of course on my left the faraway snows of Kilimanjaro. Hemminway’s green hills of Africa are still green. Those who know east Africa will tell you that it is not Kenya but Tanzania which is the safari destination of the world. And many a Tanzanians think that the Kenyans are pretending that Kilimanjaro is theirs. They know that it is the endless Serengeti that they have; 80 per cent of their economy is tourism. But suddenly something seems to be going wrong… the mass poaching of its elephants.

Southern Tanzania is where the bush war has begun. We are talking about the world’s biggest wildlife wilderness, the Selous – Mikumi ecosystem. The recent elephant census came to the conclusion that Selous had lost 90 per cent of its elephant population since 1976.Their numbers are down from 1,09,419 in 1976 to 13,084 in October 2013. At the rate of current loss, the apocalyptic vision of Tanzania losing all its elephants by 2025 is now a reality. If Selous is lost, Eden would be lost forever.

The Maasai tribesman selling Coke told me mischievously as I waited to stamp my immigration, I don’t need a passport. For them there are no borders. In less than two hours we would be in Arusha, the foothills from where the great Serengeti plains beckon you into the African wilderness of baobab trees, yellow barked acacia and the Tanzanian elephant.

Such visions did not strike me as the shuttle rolled into Arusha and hawkers clamored around selling their wares. Safari 4X4 land cruisers with the names of tour operators embossed on their sides, crisscross this sleepy town at the gateway to the rolling plains of the Serengeti, the magical names of Ngorongoro, Tarangire and Lake Manyara. This is the land that Hemingway immortalised in The Snows of Kilimanjaro.

One evening, we drove to the TGT club and over pizzas and beer watched men and women scrabble over rugby, white coffee planters swapping tales. The bar full of men hunched over Serengeti beers. The grass is soft under your feet. From here the sound of the silencer weapon to bring down a tusker seems far away. Writing in Twiga Times, Peter Lindstrom, the vice chairman of the Tanzanian Association of Tour Operators, warns darkly, we must say no to extinction. The chain of death, according to Lindstrom, runs from its shores, from the Selous, Mikumi and more remote areas, anywhere we have elephants all the way to South East Asia. Ivory is the flavor of the season.

The agents of death are the AK47s, poisoned arrows, pits and poisoned fruit. The trail ends with backstreet dealers and carving dens in Thailand or in high rises of Hong Kong or in the crowded city of Beijing, in any one of the 37 sophisticated and illegal Chinese ivory carving factories.

China is today Tanzania’s biggest trading partner. Is the Serengti getting ready for the kiss of death?

The author is Consulting Editor, Africa Rising  Email: kalyanmukherjee123@yahoo.com

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