In summary, a number of herds of elephants have descended into the Rift Valley, near Lake Bogoria, fleeing a conflict area for safety. They have caused a lot of damage to some  of the local farmers, who rely solely on their crops for survival. These farmers have, against all odds allowed these elephants to remain for their safety and believe they are a blessing - this is not a common story told in this day and age but hopefully one that will become more common. We are hoping to raise some money to help this community survive until a sustainable solution can be found and hopefully allow for wildlife and humans to live alongside each other! A dream we hope can be achieved!

In June of this year around 56 elephants came down into the Rift Valley in Kenya, a place South East of Lake Bogoria. They are assumed to have come from Laikipia - which you may or not know of and where there has, for quite a while, been a lot of unrest and killing of animals (including of elephants) which you might have heard about in the news!

It is known that elephants historically used these paths for their migration, when they could roam wherever they pleased! Now only coming down into the Valley every so often, only to be chased back up the hill for local community safety (Laikipia has far more open land).

Fortunately for the elephants they found a very remote place with food, water and what must have seemed like safety! Unfortunately for the local people of the area (some of whom consider Elephant arrival as a blessing) whose maize crop is relied upon to feed their families, as they are very remote, this was not so great - as elephants also consider maize a delicious and easy meal. (Maize for those of you who don’t know, is a crop grown in most of Kenya which is dried and ground to produce a delicious staple meal, Ugali!).

Human/ wildlife conflict is a huge problem – not only in Kenya- and therefore once it became known that these elephants were on their way it was expected by many that community would try to get rid of the elephants as quickly as possible, returning them from where they came– wouldn’t you if you relied on your Shamba or ‘garden’ to eat!

However, when William Kimosop, a County for the area went with a few volunteers with the aim of finding a solution and keeping the elephants and community safe, the community had some totally different views to the expected! In short they accepted the elephants as a blessing as they believe they had brought the rain (which is an historical belief in the community). Prior to this they have had continuous crop failures due to lack of rain etc. and wanted to encourage the elephants to stay so that people would want to visit the area and possibly help them in finding alternative income generating projects.

The situation is still on-going with more and more elephants arriving and spreading out in the area leading to a greater need for more resources than are currently available. But even so, this is a great step forward for conservation and if one small village can allow elephants to remain, even at the expense of their livelihood, I believe there could be a chance that wildlife can survive peacefully alongside humans! There is a lot to be done and so much potential but in the meantime the people, whose crops have been eaten, need food to survive and this is where I believe we can help immediately.

So, as Oli is doing his big cycle to Paris and maybe further(!) we thought it would be a great opportunity to appeal to those who feel this is a great cause and raise some money to help out the community whilst sustainable solutions are found; and who knows, if we can raise enough money we may even be able to put some towards the solutions!

I will keep you updated on the situation if you would like, via Facebook or email, please inbox me your details on annabellec.robinson@gmail.com or on Facebook Messenger (m.me/bella.robinson.948)