Baboons 'take over' Kimana School, beat students for food

Baboons in troops of up to 200 have 'taken over' the Kimana Girls Secondary School food store, the garden and the kitchen.

“They beat up the girls, in their dormitories as they scavenge for food. We have deployed our casual workers to fight them, but they outnumber them,” Catherine Mwaniki, the school’s senior principal said on Monday.

Fortunately, she said, there were no serious injuries.

Maniki said with the current drought hitting them below the belt and coupled with the shortage of food and high prices, her school needed the intervention of Kenya Wildlife Services.

The school, which is about 3 km from the Tsavo/Amboseli national park wildlife corridor, is also visited by elephants that have destroyed about 70 per cent of its fence.

“The baboons are truly a nuisance, they snatch students' food, and clothes and also destruction in the school farm. We can't open the dormitories during the day for aeration because they get inside and leave a trail of destruction,” Mwaniki said.

She said the monkeys go to the school because they can get food, leftovers and food crops from the farm too.

The principal appealed for an electric peripheral fence, to keep the girls safe from the daily attacks.

“My girls have lost uniforms and other clothes to these menacing baboons. They are chaotic animals,” the principal said.

Loitokitok KWS community warden, Abdi Aden, said the electric fence cannot stop baboons and monkeys from entering the school because they jump from trees to the school compound.

“We are aware of those invasions and I am in contact with our headquarters to see the best way of helping the school. The other option is to eliminate their troop commanders. For the elephants, we surely need an electric fence,”  the KWS official said.

Aden said he is aware the school has encountered great losses from the kitchen, to classroom disturbance, and farm invasion.

The principal said the jumbos have visited the school five times since June last year, but that their baboon visitors visit the institution at least three times a day.

“We have more than 600 girls in the school to feed, and with more than 200 baboons visiting three times, I feel saddened because our cost of sustaining the students in the school go up,” Mwaniki said.