Lion Guardians

Category: Community work, Meet the Lion Guardians, lion research fieldwork | Date: Oct 30 2007 | By: admin

Every month we have a meeting of all the lion guardians. Today is the monthly meeting. We have recorded reports from each lion guardian and we will post them over the next few days. Keep reading!

Here is Koikai’s report.

2 responses so far

Category: lion biology, lion research fieldwork | Date: Oct 29 2007 | By: admin

Our guests were kind enough to take some video footage while they were here. In this clip you can see Nosero the collared lion roaring.

3 responses so far

Category: life in camp, lion research fieldwork | Date: Oct 27 2007 | By: admin

We are having visitors at our camp recently. We had two Masters’ students from Leiden University in the Netherlands (they stayed with us for only one day) and two Doctorate students from the Oxford University, UK. All are researching biologists and the joke going around camp now is that we have enough heads at the moment to run a multinational research organization.

On a recent monitoring exercise, they came across three of the lions. Lentim (a lone male that lives near our camp), Sangale and Nemasi, who have moved in together to the plains a few kilometers from our camp. It seems that Sangale followed Nemasi into her territory. This area now has an abundance of game.

Otherwise, nothing major to report except light rains that have been showering several parts of the group ranch. The result is this.

8 responses so far

Category: Community work | Date: Oct 25 2007 | By: admin

Mr Sikempei had been visited by a hyena two consecutive nights but the hyena did not take livestock. He reported to the Guardian (Ritei) who visited the boma and saw that the boma fence had some weak points. Ritei decided to fix them. His passion for the community had surpassed his resting day, to make him work on his only day of rest.

I found him in the process of doing this and took a few pictures. There is also a short video clip of Ritei cutting branches to build the boma.

No responses yet

Category: Meet the Lion Guardians | Date: Oct 23 2007 | By: admin

The Lion Guardian for Kalesirua zone, to the south west of the group ranch, is Olubi Lairumbe, also known as Meitiaki. Meitiaki was a name he acquired after he killed a lion (Well, that was before he became a lion guardian). Maasai warriors are traditionally given a new name after they have successfully killed a lion. Those who watched the Lion Guardian video are familiar with him. Here’s a link to that post (29^th September 2007.) http://lionguardians.wildlifedirect.org/2007/09/29/36/

Anyway, today Olubi had a day off from work. Today was a special day for him and his three-murran brothers. They were celebrating a special ceremony that will enable him to be having meals alone in the absence of other murrans. No, it’s not that they’ve been fasting since they became murrans! It’s just that to teach the value of sharing among the warriors (murrans) and increase bonding among them, tradition forbade them from eating or even drinking anything on their own. Now, as time advances, and the murrans approach elder hood they are relieved of some of these demands.

I attended the ceremony and took a few pictures.

Here is Olubi holding a lion-skin cloak, which is an important part of the ritual. The beads are sown on by the Mammas. he has red ochre on his skin to decorate himself. This lion was killed a long time ago, here on the ranch.