Kenya Wildlife Service rangers have camped at Kimana Girls in Kajiado to contain the invasion of baboons that have a crush on girls.
Amboseli National Park senior KWS warden Paul Wambi visited the school on Monday.
On Wednesday, Wambi told the Star the baboons had retreated for two days after seeing game rangers in the school from Monday.
KWS director for Nairobi, Kiambu, Makueni and Kajiado, Samuel Tokore said baboons act like humans and the presence of men in the school will keep them away.
“They even smell and differentiate a woman from a man and sometimes look at the dress. They invaded the school because they realised that there were no men,” Tokore said.
Tokore directed his officers to give instructions to the school on how to manage their litter.
“They need to burn food leftovers so that the baboons do not find what to scavenge. Then, the apes will migrate elsewhere and give the students the peace they require,” he said.
≈
Senior principal Catherine Mwaniki said that after the baboons saw the KWS rangers on Monday, they visited less often.
“They are now coming in the morning, lunch and evening to check on what the girls are eating. We heard bullet fried early today from the rangers, and since that time we have not seen the baboons,”she said.
The Loitokitok KWS community warden Abdi Aden said his team will not leave until they have ended the conflict between the wild animals and the school community.
“We have a duty to protect the lives of the students, and already we are working on a plan to deal with the baboons. We may eliminate a few of their commanders to send fear through their platoons,” said Aden.
The school’s administration on Monday claimed the baboons were beating up the girls to grab what they were eating.
“At the rate at which the baboons have invaded the school, we fear they will even attack our food stores at this time of food scarcity,” the principal said.
The baboons, who have been nicknamed by the students “Kimana boys”, had started taking over girls’ dormitories to cool off from the scorching heat.
The school, we have established, is also visited by other wild animals along with elephants from the Kimana wildlife conservation area.
The school is surrounded by agricultural farms that use water streams flowing from Mt Kilimanjaro for irrigation.
When the wild animals including the baboons fail to access the farms, they cross over to the school where they find little resistance or no resistance as they scavenge on the girls’ food.
(Edited by V. Graham)
