The news for the land of Turkana is a mixture. Quite fortunately, last year’s clashes with the neighboring Borana tribe have subsided, and the families that were displaced during the troubles have returned to their homes. Although making a living out here is still tough, the Turkana are an entrepreneurial people. Historically pastoralists, they also have taken up farming. In addition, the Turkana take advantage of the wildlife in the area, hunting and consuming some of it. Oh, and some of the Turkana folks are known poachers of elephants, and sellers of elephant ivory to local criminal organizations
In this climate, we are trying to turn things around by engaging the community to live more harmoniously and prosperously with elephants. A tall order.
To start, we wanted to see what Turkana children really thought about elephants. However, if we just asked them outright, they would probably want to get the “correct” answer, and say they like elephants no matter what, so Vella Kwomboka, community education officer for Save the Elephants, conducted a simple and clever experiment. She had Turkana students write a homework essay about a real-life elephant encounter. Then we simply counted up all the emotion-words contained in the essays. Dear readers, all the emotions were negative. “Fear” and “relief from fear” were the most common, as children met up unexpectedly with dangerous elephants to and from school, in their villages and out in the bush. It gets worse. After “fear” and “relief,” were “anger” and “hatred.” We peered into these few “hatred and anger” essays and learned that those children had friends who were killed by elephants. Understandable.
To start to balance things out, we wanted to provide the kids a safe, positive experience with elephants. So Disney and STE teamed up, and we are now taking kids on field trips to the Samburu National Reserve as part of our regular community outreach program. What follows is a pictorial essay on the very first Turkana student field trip to a National Reserve.