Kenya

I came to Mombasa in Kenya on December 6th of 2006 and I stayed in this country for 2 weeks only, but I can say that Kenya is one of the reachest African countries. I have meet a lot of white turists there and if I compare Kenya to Cameroon it is quite different, because in Kenya they have more touristic attractions like Massai Mara, Tsavo National Park and beautiful beaches with white sand and palms with a lot of bars, hotels, cheap food, safari trips where you can see a lot of animals like lions, elephants, rhinos, girafees, monkies, etc... This country is perfect and typical African destination with all those attractions for turists. From an entomological view I can say that it is pretty dangerous, because when collecting you can not stay in safe hotels or on these beautiful beaches, but you have to go to the wild nature which is quite dangerous when you stay in the hot African bush with all the lions, leopards, hyenas, buffalos and snakes. I was collecting butterflies almost every day of my stay in Kenya, but only once I went for night collecting to Tsavo national park and that was really scary to sit infront of the tent during the night and look into the dark and thinking from where will something jump on my neck. By the way the only things I attracted to the light were scorpions, grasshopers and some Geometrids and Noctuids. This was probably wrong period for Saturnidae. The people said that big rains came earlier this year so I think all my favorit Saturnids were in larvae stage during this time of year. Anyway the locality was great, with a lot of Accacias and other smaller bushes and trees. Tsavo is on the south part of Kenya close to the borders with Tanzania. It is mainly grassy steppe with a lot of trees and bushes and on the south part of this amazing national park there are big stony mountains, which definitely have to be a great localities for many butterfly and moth species, but unfortunately I had no time for visiting them. Tsavo is during the day just a paradise for butterflies because white flowers on the bushes attracted many species of Nyphalidae, Pieridae, Papilionidae, Lycaenidae and Hesperidae. There is also many roads where most of the species come to mugs for seeking of the water. During these two weeks I collected about 500 specimens of butterflies which was good because I only spent few hours in the bush every day, and that was because it was very very hot weather, almost 45 degrees of Celsia and the heat was exploring from the dry grass as well. I could not find many tall trees where I could rest in the shade. I was mostly keeping my self on the roads only because I did not want to disturb animals and in the big grass you can not see where you step as well. Once I was collecting Graphiums and I found my self very close to the Baboon monkey, which was female with a small cub by her side. I was just looking into her eyes from distance only few meters, when I decided to make some noise and screamed at her but the thing was that she was not affraid at all and only slowly walked into the bush. Then I realized that it was mother but where is the father? Then I saw him just behind me on the tree trunk yelling at me and showing me his big tooths while he was shaking with the tree. I tell you they are big monkeys and they are not affraid of people and this one, he definitely was quite nervous, but thanksgod I had my net with which I scared him and he just ran away. Every day after that they were there and I was collecting butterflies quite close to them for my own protection, because I know that these monkeys can see lions much earlier than me and if they are OK I will be OK as well. Baboons were not affraid of me and I was not affraid of them after that so I used them, by friendly way of course.
People in Kenya are friendly but will try to sale you many things and sometimes they can be pretty anoying. The word you need to learn when you go to Kenya is ,, jumbo,, which means hello, because they say jumbo to you every time they meet you. Another one is ,,abari,, how are you and you answer ,,muzuri sana,, very well.
Once I was in Kenya I wanted to visit Kipepeo Project which is the butterfly farm which was only about 100km from the place where I was so I decided to make a trip to this farm. And it was good decision because they are very nice people there and they really know how to rear or catch butterflies. This farm is placed inside of the Arabuko Sokoke forest which is the biggest natural wild forest of east Africa, as I was told. So if you plane to go to Kenya and after whole trip you dont catch any Saturnids you can still go to Kippepeo project and buy them there for really cheap prices!! I bought there Argema mimosae cocoons, papered specimens of Melanocera menippe, Gonimbrasia zambezina and Cirina forda all in perfect A1 conditions! You can buy all these species and many other species on the web as well: www.kipepeo.org and I highly recommend them because they are very good professionals and they know what they do!

Martin Jagelka