Laikipia County

I worked for Gene Altman as a data manager for the Amboseli Baboon Project, which is based in Amboseli, Kenya.

And I spent about 10 months in Impala Research Camp in Laikipia, Kenya, studying all of baboons, which was terrific.

The baboons are super interesting, and being on the ground with baboons you're following them around on foot in an area that still had elephants and lions and leopards and hyenas and all of these animals was really powerful in terms of understanding what life must have been like for our early ancestors.

But it also made me really wonder, well, what about species that are more closely related to us? Baboons are interesting, they have fascinating social lives, but would we not learn more by studying our closest living relatives? And so that led me to looking into chimpanzees as a research focus.

We also organized African Savannah Games and the Maasai Mara English writing competition.

Over the years, we have donated 26 motorcycles to several community conservancies across the Maasai Mara and Laikipia.

Today, we continue to focus our support on Olaro Conservancy, Mara Ripoi Conservancy, and Nashilai Maasai Conservancy.

But over time, another lesson became increasingly clear.

We have the BBC here r- reporting about a man reportedly shot at a Kenya protest against US Ebola quarantine center.

Now, a story there was that, um, the Laikipia Air Base in the center of the country was being used as a quarantine center, but only for Americans, and that created s- some understandable controversy.

But, uh, this was just the latest in a long list of controversies in that area, many of which are due to the enduring presence of the British Army for various training activities.

Now, the ability to train in Kenya is dependent upon what's called the Defense Cooperation Agreement, the DCA, which had been running since 1964, and now uses Laikipia Air Base.

And after multiple allegations of rape and murder and environmental damage, the DCA was suspended, not for the first time, but was suspended, and prompted the government to make a written statement to the BATUK inquiry, BATUK meaning, uh, British Army Training Unit Kenya, uh, at the end of 2025.

Now, they said in the statement that the UK MOD deeply regrets those issues and challenges which have arisen in relation to the UK's defense presence in Kenya, both in the past and more recently.