They are Afraid of Us
They are Afraid of Us, those were his words. A young man who was not scared to scare away a small herd of buffaloes that were few centimeters away from him.
It was a bright chilly day in Naivasha. A friend took me for a ride there, where we could be able to enjoy wildlife within the community. Naivasha is less than two hours from Nairobi. So we got there fast.
When you travel with friends who happen to have passion similar to yours. And ones you connect to naturally. Traveling with them offers the best experience you can ever think of. You get to have a deep conversation, share awesome ideas, have lots of fun, just to name a few.
Naivasha
It is one of the big towns within Nakuru county. One of the best tourist destinations in Kenya. Home to the famous Hell’s Gate National Park, Longonot and Lake Naivasha. Not leaving out a number of awesome hotels, motels, camping sites, and beaches.
Most Nairobians have found it to be one of the convenient places to spend their weekend.
Most Communities living with Wildlife believe that wildlife is afraid of them
In some part of Naivasha, Wildlife is within the community and they have been co-existing peacefully most of the time.
My friend and I were busy filming this beautiful giraffe with her baby. They were feeding at the roadside.
We set up the cameras to help us capture this amazing experience. Being too close to wildlife, give a certain type of happiness to our souls. I got tempted to get close to the giraffe.
She was in the company of a small herd of zebras. That had several babies. Nothing beats the cuteness of wildlife babies. Just like any other babies, they are curious.
As I went closer, the babies would look at me seriously. As if studying me. Their mums didn’t give me much attention.
In the midst of all these, is when the young man with his friend came our way. They were heading back home. And saw a small herd of buffaloes few meters from where we were standing. They scared them and that’s when we realized that we were in the company of buffaloes too.
I have always known that buffaloes in a herd are not dangerous, and I shared the same knowledge to my friend. But he went ahead to question the young man about it. To get the other side of the story.
Between giggles, he informed him that the animals were scared of humans. And that’s why he knew they would be scared away once he scared them.
How I wish, we could have managed to capture that moment. As you may have also realized, wildlife may be hard to spot outside their protected areas too. We had spent almost thirty minutes at the spot, without noticing the buffaloes.
But you can attest that we can co-exist peacefully with them. We were newcomers in that area, yet we weren’t attacked by them or something.
Conclusion
As long the local communities don’t engage in practices that take away the area meant for wildlife. Or do awful stuff to the wildlife. These two species, humans and wildlife, can peacefully co-exist together.
The people we meant have lived with these animals to a point of knowing their behaviors, feeding patterns, movements, etc. They were helpful and willing to share their knowledge with us.
It was a good day, we got to get up-close with this wildlife. Watch them go on with their business like we were never there.
Sadly, one of the warthogs got kicked out of the group and left behind. We nick-named him, our warthog. Funny enough, he didn’t seem bothered by the situation. He continued to graze as the group wandered away.
We enjoyed some antelopes, jumping around in joy to the water point (our genius guess since we could not pass a particular point to avoid trespassing private land.)
It was one of the best days, helping me forget about the flu and fever that had worked on me ruthlessly.
I made an awesome new friend, hopefully, a travel partner some day. But most importantly, I was able to help my new friend to practically see and understand that we can co-exist with wildlife peacefully.
