It is 8 45.am and classes across Kenya are already underway. But for 11-year-old Sinyok Maninai, a Grade 5 pupil at Enkolili Primary School in Loitoktok’s Kuku Ward, the school day is only just beginning. I meet her on a dusty footpath with her friends, books tucked under her arm, as they cautiously make their way to class. Unlike most children, Maninai cannot leave home at dawn.
“We wait until later,” she says shyly. “In the morning, elephants come to our farms. Sometimes we also hear lions.” For Maninai and her peers, education begins with a gamble whether it is safe enough to walk to school at all.
When we arrive at the school, one thing immediately strikes me: there is no fence. The compound lies fully exposed to both people and wildlife, leaving pupils frighteningly vulnerable. Inside, classrooms are half-empty. Many students arrive hours late. Teachers, too, delay their journeys, fearing dangerous encounters along the road.
“This is our daily reality,” says Simon Ole Shumbai, a teacher. “We want to teach, but we are also human. If elephants block the road, no teacher will risk walking here in the dark.”
What Maninai and her classmates experience is not simply the hardship of living near wildlife. It is the result of criminal land dealings that have reshaped Kajiado’s fragile landscape.
For decades, powerful cartels and brokers have targeted unsuspecting Kenyans with illegal land sales inside traditional wildlife corridors, often issuing fraudulent title deeds. Local officials accused of corruption or negligence have allowed illegal settlements to spread across the routes that once linked Amboseli to Tsavo and beyond.
Even though no wildlife corridors here in kajiado are officially gazetted by government, the encroachment on these open rangelands interferes with the ecosystem and destroys critical wildlife habitat. And in recent years, the crisis has deepened.
In nearby Kimana Ward, community members have increasingly begun selling their parcels of land to private buyers. As new owners move in, many immediately fence off their properties, blocking wildlife corridors that once enabled elephants and other species to move safely across the landscape.
This sudden fragmentation forces wildlife to divert into villages, farms and schools escalating the very conflicts now disrupting education in places like Enkolili. Local conservancies, already stretched thin, are attempting to contain the crisis. They purchase critical parcels of land, negotiate with residents, and struggle to keep key routes open. But with fencing spreading rapidly, their efforts are often a race against time.
“These nature crimes illegal allocations, charcoal burning and destruction of rangelands have dismantled ecosystems,” a conservancy ranger tells me. “Once a corridor is blocked, wildlife has nowhere to go except into human settlements.”
Toll on children
The consequences for children are devastating:
- Missed Learning – Wildlife incursions delay or stop lessons entirely.
- Fear and Trauma – Students like Maninai walk to school under constant threat.
- Absenteeism – Parents, especially of girls, keep children at home during peak conflict seasons.
- Destroyed Infrastructure – Classrooms, fences, and water tanks are frequently damaged by wildlife.
“Sometimes at dawn we hear hyenas outside,” says Naomi Naserian, a mother of three. “We fear sending the children early. But if they go late, they miss lessons. What can we do?”
According to the Kenya Wildlife Service, Kajiado is among the top counties reporting human-wildlife conflict. Conservationists warn that unless illegal land allocations and unregulated land sales are curbed, the region could face ecological collapse. “Our wildlife corridors are disappearing,” says Daniel Koin, a ranger with a local conservancy. “Without restoring them, we risk more human deaths, more school disruptions, and even extinction of species.”
In Kimana, the change is stark: once-open rangelands have been carved into hundreds of fenced parcels. This loss of mobility threatens not only wildlife survival but also the cultural and economic fabric of pastoralist communities.
The battle for Enkolili’s children is not just against wildlife it is against a criminal land economy profiting from the fragmentation and sale of sensitive ecosystems. Without urgent investigations, prosecution of illegal land dealings, enforcement of land-use planning, and restoration of vital migratory routes, both Kenya’s biodiversity and children’s futures remain at risk. For now, Maninai’s reality remains unchanged. She still leaves home late, scanning the horizon for elephants, and still arrives at school hours after children in other parts of Kenya have begun their day.
Her dream is simple: “I want to be a teacher one day,” she says. But without action, her dream and those of hundreds of children in Kuku and Kimana may slip beyond reach. Because here in Enkolili, nature crimes are not just about elephants and lions. They are about lost classrooms, lost species, and lost futures
