NOT A GOOD DAY FOR KENYA
The first bit of bad news reached in the morning, that Mrs. Michuki, who only buried her husband some three months ago after the principal owner of the Windsor Golf Hotel and Country Club had passed away, also died in the early hours of the day. This robbed the Windsor of two of the owning principals within months, leaving staff and management dumbstruck of why fate had to be so cruel.
The next bit of bad news came at lunch time, that Mombasa Air Safaris lost a LET 410 in a crash in the Masai Mara, with 2 pilots and 2 passengers killed on impact after attempting to take off, leaving a further 3 passengers critically injured. That bit of news already went viral on the social networks after breaking the news a few hours ago.
Now did news come in via the BBC of a tribal clash in the Tana River area of Coast Province, which left at least 48 people dead in what appears to be a violent backlash over grazing rights on fertile pastures.
Amongst the 48 were a 31 women and 11 children who got reportedly burned in their huts after attackers from the rival tribe has set the homesteads alight, while the six men died fighting, being hacked to death by machetes. The two tribes, the Orma and Pokomo, have been attempting to get control over the pastures to ensure their herds are well fed and watered and found no formula to share access to the land, landing them in a violent battle for supremacy.
Kenyas tourism sector is said to be stunned by the BBC report which just broke into the international domain but one source from the coast already expressed his regret over this latest piece of bad news saying is it ever going to end. This series of bad news today affecting tourism is terrible and will give us bad publicity for a while to come. The crash was bad and it is deeply regretted that people died but the mention of Coast Province in regard of these killings is very misleading. The Tana area where this happened is a very long way off what people overseas understand as coast. There is no link to our resorts here and no threat to our visitors safety. It should be pointed out that the incident, as bad as it sounds, is a long distance off and reflects age old customs and tribal rivalries which were allowed to spill over instead of having a peaceful resolution for their dispute
Mrs. Agatha Juma, CEO of the Kenya Tourism Federation, in response to a question asked by this correspondent about the incident said: It is very scary that our government has not used their intelligence and information to prevent such incidents from happening, it is not good for our reputation as a destination.
Other coastal sources have agreed that this will increase their challenge to keep hotel occupancies up as the negative publicity races around the world, with figures already down by over 20 percent compared with a year ago for coastal resorts. Indeed, not a good day for Kenya, so watch this space to see good news return to the headlines.
6 Responses
Very sad day indeed. Alot of this suffering could have been avoided in particular in the the Tana Delta. These are problems that have been simmering and raging on and off for some time now with not much being done about the whole situation.
Thanks for your thoughtful contribution to these tragic news and thanks for continuing to read my blog.
W.
It seems to me that we are more concerned for the fate of the tourism than for that of the victims. Sounds like: “It’s okay so long as it’s far away from where the tourists might go…!” Yes tourism is important but we are being rather insensitive I think!!
Tourism being a key economic factor at the coast, naturally stakeholders want the locational distance highlighted to affirm no tourist visitors were at any time at risk. Yes, a gruesome development but ini fairness, I cannot blame the tourism stakeholders for pointing out the obvious.
Thanks for reading my blog.
W.
Reblogged this on bintisafaris and commented:
‘The crash was bad and it is deeply regretted that people died but the mention of Coast Province in regard of these killings is very misleading. The Tana area where this happened is a very long way off what people overseas understand as coast. There is no link to our resorts here and no threat to our visitors safety. It should be pointed out that the incident, as bad as it sounds, is a long distance off ‘