Hippos, poaching, game conservation.

Yesterday morning, a hippo was crossing the main highway on the outskirts of town when it was hit by a matatu coming from the north and it bounced onto a car coming from the south. No one was injured or killed except for the hippo. Shortly thereafter, before the police arrived, membes of the public came on the scene with pangas (machetes) and knives so that they could carve up the hippo for dinner that evening. There was much jostling, shoving and arguing and two men were stabbed in the melee involving more than 100 people when the Kenya Wildlife Society (KWS) and the police finally showed up and tried to haul away the carcass. Well they failed miserably as the hippo weighed 1600+ pounds and they didn't have the equipment to cart it away so they told the wanainchi (crowd; literally meaning people of the country) to line up and then they carved it up themselves and distributed to the people hanging around. They took away the Kiboko (hippo) meat and said that it was probably the sweetest meat you've ever tasted.

I was gagging at this point because they showed all of this on the 7 and 9 p.m. evening broadcasts! It was awful! I mean here this country is trying to prevent poaching and encouraging the protection of wildlife and not exploiting game for dining tables and then they go ahead and divvy up a dead hippo to the locals who will know see that it may be okay to kill animals for food because the KWS supports it since they carved up the hippo. WTF! Mind you, the hippo's partner was at a dam a mile away, probably wondering what happened to her mate. Urghhh, today is an "I hate this country!" day. Ughh, more later.

3/4/05

There was an article about the growing popularity of game meat. It has become a delicacy for a lot of restaurants and sometimes the meat is ill-gained. Most of the restaurants have suppliers who have farms that breed game meat specifically for them like Ostrich, Impala etc. But more and more local butcheries are getting meat from illegal traps in game reserves and poaching not for skins but for meat itself. The main reason is that beef prices are going through the roof because there's a drought. (The other day I was surprised to see chicken going for a much lower rate than beef.) And game meat apparently has a better flavor and is much cheaper. This will be a problem in the future.