(This article is written by Neil Jacobsohn, a South African-based freelance journalist and business consultant, who recently traveled with Conservancy Safaris in Namibia. For more information please visit www.neiljacobsohn.com)
“MAKE your footprint count!” Yeah, yeah, the concept of eco-this or eco-that is rapidly becoming a cliché, what with pseudo eco-lodges, eco-tours and eco-estates springing up like weeds. So I was sceptical when I was invited to the maiden safari of a new tourism company in Namibia, on the south-western tip of Africa.
Having done it, there’s no arguing that Kunene Conservancy Safaris (KCS) are genuinely walking the talk – not least because the operation is owned by five community conservancies in Namibia, with all proceeds from its activities going not to some distant corporation, but straight back to the 1,800 people who live in those communities.
Add a pretty remarkable safari experience to that feel-good factor and it’s a winning formula. Following black rhino on foot with a local tracker. Sitting transfixed at your luncheon table as seven massive desert elephant stroll right into your camp. Or eyeballing a pride of magnificent desert lion, and then joining in the debate with the local community on how lions and people can live together. That was just for starters!
KCS is funded by a loan from two Scandinavian entrepreneurs who are long-term private supporters of Namibia’s well-documented community-based natural resource management programme. KCS’s activities are directed through a registered trust with professional advisers (who provide their services free), but ownership vests in the community conservancies of Puros, Sanitatas, Okonjombo, Orupembe and Marienfluss, all situated in the spectacular north-western Kunene region.
For the uninitiated, a conservancy in Namibia is a legally registered entity which manages its own wildlife in a sustainable way and in return gets rights over its use, including valuable tourism rights. The Namibian government set new standards for conservation in 1996 when it amended legislation to allow collective ownership of natural resources by rural Namibians.
Today, no fewer than 57 such conservancies have been established in Namibia, covering 15% of the country’s landmass. That’s 13-million hectares – or, put another way, an area the size of Denmark, Switzerland and the Netherlands put together, where the natural resources effectively belong to the local people!
These conservancies are supported by a variety of non-governmental organisations which provide training and developmental skills, and are initially funded mainly by international donors, until they develop revenue sources of their own.
And tourism is precisely such a key revenue source. Safari veteran Russell Vinjevold, with more than 28 years conservation and tourism experience in South Africa and Namibia, is Chief Executive of the new company and will personally lead most of the tours. As we sip fine red wine at our campsite above the Hoanib River, he explains: “Revenue flows to the communities both directly and indirectly – to the five co-owner conservancies, plus to any other conservancies we visit. We pay camping fees to stay in conservancy campsites. We pay traverse fees to cross conservancy lands. In each owner-conservancy, we pay for community hosts and campsite assistants.
“And then any profits we make, after direct costs and repayment of the loan, flow straight back to the five owner-conservancies themselves.”
The difference, and its palpable, is that you feel not so much a tourist as a guest of the local community. In each owner conservancy, a community host joins the tour. In remote Okonjombo we sat at our campsite in a river bed washed bone-white with moonlight, swapping stories and anecdotes late into the night with veteran game guard Ngevi Tjikaho. We talked about marriage, children, death; about life in this aridly-beautiful desert region.
“This is different from other tour companies,” says Lucky Kasaona, a Herero headman who joined us on the trip. “We’re making real contact with the people who are benefitting from this safari.”
And there should be benefits to share. The safaris are not cheap. The flagship Kunene Kaleidoscope trip costs about US$5,800 per person for 10 days and nine nights, with pickups from either Windhoek or Walvis Bay. Shorter specialist tours, focusing on the desert elephant or lion, or on culture and conservation, are also offered at about US$3,400 per person.
So what do you get for your money?
We flew into Walvis Bay and were collected by Russell in a brand-new Land Rover. Off on the long drive through the Skeleton Coast National Park to our first stop – not at a campsite, but at Wereldsend, the legendary base camp of the IRDNC organisation (it stands for Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation – see www.irdnc.org.na) from where the now national community-based conservation programme was piloted in the early 1980s.
There we are hosted by none other than IRDNC founders Garth Owen-Smith and Dr Margaret Jacobsohn. We start with a visit to the “rhino graveyard” – a collection of the bones of rhino, elephant and giraffe, mostly victims of poaching that nearly wiped out Kunene’s wildlife in the 80s. Around the campfire Garth and Margie speak passionately about the community conservation programme, setting the context for the safari experience that will follow. IRDNC, whose role includes driving initiatives that bring sustainable revenue to local communities, has helped establish the KCS business.
At dawn we set off with local tracker Philemon Nuab into Torra Conservancy. Only a few kilometres past domestic cattle at a borehole we spot a black rhino and her calf. Philemon lopes effortlessly into the stony hills and we stumble behind.
Soon he waves us to a halt and positions us on a rocky outcrop. “The rhino are there” – he indicates a patch of scrub – “and if you keep quiet they will come…”
And they do. We crouch among the rocks, hardly breathing, as the rhino browse just below us. A clink of rock and Big Mama whirls to face us. It’s one thing to watch rhino from a vehicle; entirely another experience to be eyeballed in the open veld by a one-ton beast from less than 100 metres away!
Big Mama is wary but not aggressive. The message is inescapable – this is our place and you are the interloper! After a magnificent sighting, including watching junior take a power nap in his mother’s shade, we creep back to the vehicle, breathless and exhilarated.
“Remember this is not a game park,” says Garth. “This is communal land, farmed by the local people, and shared with the wildlife. People are now looking after the game. That’s what is unique; conservancies give the animals much more space than putting them in a park. But community conservation can only work when natural resources, including wildlife generate real benefits for conservancy members.”
The next night finds us in Sesfontein Conservancy at the astonishing Ganamub Mountain camp, perched among the house-size boulders that have tumbled down the mountainside. Our tents are pitched by the cheerfully efficient KCS crew on different levels amid the rocks, and we gather around the dinner table to watch the setting sun paint the hills golden ochre and the full moon rise into a mauve sky. Memories of the city fade blissfully away…
Each day is built around a highlight. One hot morning we set off on foot from the floor of the dry Ganamub River in search of water pools in the rocks towering above us. As we clamber upwards, it’s seems impossible that elephant can thread their way through the steep, narrow passes and up massive rock steps, but plentiful droppings speak for themselves. At the top we reward ourselves with a dip in an icy pool. Back down in the riverbed we see many elephant, including one bad-tempered bull who half-heartedly charges us – thankfully when we’re back in the vehicle!
But the elephant experience of note comes in the Puros Conservancy camp site. As we laze around the lunch table, no fewer than seven elephants, an old bull and six full-size youngsters, wander into camp to feed only metres away. The sign nailed to a tree: “Do not leave food where it can be seen or smelled by elephant” becomes very real…as real as the clearly-audible rumble of the old bull as he keeps the youngsters under control.
Russell speaks softly: “Sometimes there is conflict between animals and people. Imagine your child playing here now. But people know that sharing their land with wildlife is making a better future. So the animals are worth more alive than dead.”
In the Hoarusib River we come face to face with that reality, after we track and watch a pride of five desert lion lounging on the warm sand, waiting for nightfall and the hunt. There’s nothing in the world like being fixed by the flame-tawny gaze of an adult lion only metres away – even from within a vehicle.
But the pride male –one of the biggest wild lions in Namibia – is missing – and is spotted that night in the bush only 100m from the village. Russell’s words – “imagine your child playing here now” – echo in our heads.
Community leaders gather under a giant Camel thorn tree to decide what to do. People join from far and wide, most carrying their own chairs to the meeting. It’s not unusual to walk 30 kms to attend such a meeting, says Chief Lucky.
We’re invited to join as spectators, and are surprised to hear the conservancy chairman proclaim: “These are our lion.” Only a few years ago this lion would have been shot. Instead, the conservancy now calls on the services of Dr Flip Stander, founder of the Desert Lion Conservation project (www.desertlion.info). The male, already fitted with a tracking collar, is darted and the batteries replaced. The experience is disconcerting enough to send him back into the river bed with the rest of the pride, and away from the village. Livestock have already been moved to another area.
Flip is now training several local men to operate the tracking equipment so they can trace the lions for visitors, thus bringing revenue to the community – and alerting them if the great cats approach the village or livestock. This is community conservation at work.
And so our 10 days fly by. There’s a trip through the magnificent Marienfluss valley, a vast, grass-covered plain (grassy at the moment, after excellent rains). We break for a cooling swim in a rockpool on the Kunene River; we lunch overlooking neighbouring Angola.
Some nights we camp in the desert; other nights we enjoy hot showers and flush toilets in conservancy camp sites (what luxury after a day in a dusty vehicle!). It’s beyond comfortable; our tents are put up and taken down for us, bed rolls laid out, canvas water basins prepared, simple but wholesome meals cooked and drinks kept cool in the vehicle fridges. Ice is even produced for the nightly G&Ts, and to our surprise one night, ice cream after a hearty Hungarian goulash. Other small touches abound, like electrical inverters in the vehicles to allow guests to recharge camera batteries (forget your cellphone – no coverage here!)
Most of all, it’s authentic. It’s often hot, it’s usually dusty, the distances are vast and the roads often little more than rock-strewn tracks. This is serious 4×4 country; no place for city softies with designer mud on their luxury SUVS here! But…this is the real Africa, not a sanitised package tour. We’ve met, dined with and shared experiences with our conservancy hosts, as their guests. We’ve slept under indigo night skies with an endless array of stars. We’ve gazed on astonishing vistas. We’ve seen lion, elephant, giraffe, gemsbok, kudu, springbok, jackal and much more. And we’ve seen it from the inside.
Many tourists visit this great open space to see the wildlife. But few will share this feeling of having got under the skin of Namibia; of understanding just a little more of the harsh but magnificent life of the desert – and to feel, that for once, yes, our footprints really have counted.
For more information visit www.kcs-namibia.com.na.
The group consisted of our group, many guides and guides in training, and some clients from a nearby luxury safari camp. Eventually Flip drove out of the thick bush, only 100 yards from where we were all waiting, in something straight out of a Mad Max movie. Shirtless, shoeless, deeply tanned and smoking cigarettes, he pulled into the middle of the group and started shouting directions to everyone in Afrikaans. The Springbok was to be dropped out of the back of a pick up truck, and he’d follow and hope to get the lion into darting position. Some of the clients from the luxury camp had asked if they could go along with into the bush to see the events, while our guides in no uncertain terms said that we’d all be staying here so as to not interrupt. To my surprise Flip took this request all in stride and was quite gracious in fact. After loading these tourists into the pick up truck along side the dead springbok and giving them very clear instructions, he told them that he expected after this experience of a lifetime that they would be writing a nice check to the Puros Conservancy to “help protect my lions.
First of all, for the first time in well over a year, the publicly held travel companies that the magazine follows on a weekly basis (tracking % growth or decline on an annual basis and aggregating that for an industry snapshot of sorts) was up 5.9%. Clearly things were pretty bad this time last year, but at least we’re seeing positive growth numbers vs. the steep declines we’ve seen week on week for the past year. 
