Funny story. A couple of months ago a Famous Magazine sought me out to write an essay roughly on the theme of nature, which I love so I said absolutely. I pitched an essay on racism in conservation in Kenya, basically looking at how narratives like this are thrown around. https://twitter.com/CareyBaraka/status/1347206383817658374

After a brief back and forth my pitch was rejected on the basis that it didn't seem like an issue worth discussing in Famous Magazine. When you write about nature in Africa you aren't supposed to write about Africans as anything more than background.

Kenya is a gorgeous country. Breathtaking and singular, but we who live here will tell you that conservation discourse doesn't want Kenyans in the frame. The pandemic has forced the industry to face Kenyan audiences more squarely but in normal times? Heh.

It's not a coincidence that we've had two of these types of stories in the last 7 days. The conservation narrative sees the people who live where others holiday as part of the background. Once you start exploring their agency, it's too much. That's a problem.

Don't interpet this as me saying kill the elephants. It's the opposite. I'm saying that the people who live where the elephants live are part of the story. And this single story that good foreigners swoop in to save wildlife from the errant locals is archaic and just wrong.