Nahim Khalil: The ‘Gambit’ of Samburu

From his wild hair, dishevelled long beard, penetrating blue eyes, and relaxed nature, Nahim Khalil may be mistaken for a lost gypsy among the Samburu.

Nahim, who was born in the Kenyan Coast, is at home in Samburu, having lived there for close to 30 years.

He understands the Samburu way of life and speaks the local dialect so fluently that you will believe he is a son of the Samburu people.

The locals call him “Ngambit”, corrupted from Gambit, the mythological creature that is half man and half beast that lives in the Engishile mountain ranges.

“If I put myself in a cage, I am sure tourists will gladly pay to see me, believing I’m the living Gambit, that fictional character in comic books,” Nahim, the owner of Lion King Bush Camp and Safaris, jokes about his nickname.

When the locals want to instil discipline in their children, they are often threatened that “Ngambit” will “eat” them if they don’t reform. Nahim is sort of feared, respected and loved, all in equal measure.

Rather than “eat” the wayward children of Samburu, he ensures that the poor learners are in school by paying school fees for them.

When those who are unwell seek help from him, he takes them to the nearby hospital for treatment.

For the love of his adopted people, Nahim hates to see their animals being sold for pocket change. He encourages cattle owners to sell them when they are healthy for good deals.

Nahim revealed that “a cow can fetch Sh70,000 to Sh80,000 during the rainy season, but during the dry season the same cow can be sold off for as little as Sh700!”

Morans and poachers know Nahim’s ugly side. When angry, locals say, he is a raging buffalo or shuma, meaning iron.

An elderly man remembers a time when Nahim chased away his son and morans across the flooded Ewaso Nyiro River, because they had trespassed onto his Lion King Camp.

Nahim’s face lights up in excitement when he speaks about the Samburu and their relationship with wild animals. “We have coexisted with animals for many years, and the Samburu people are among the greatest wildlife conservationists I know of,” he says, describing the relationship between man and beast as symbiotic.

“When elephants sense water presence in the ground, they dig up wells that serve wildlife, cattle and people. So the people of Samburu protect the elephant for this kind deed, unless it turns rogue. They know that a satisfied wild animal is friendly and harmless,” he says, further calling for local integration when it comes to conservation matters, “because they know the terrain, understand animals’ habitation and behaviour, and can track poachers on end”.

Though he spends most of his time in the wild, Nahim is well-informed on current affairs. He switches topics easily, depending on his target audience, and can discuss wildlife, politics, anthropology, archaeology and even cookery with ease.

He also has a good grasp of both local and foreign languages, being fluent in Dholuo, Sabaot, Nandi, Kikuyu, Kiluhya, Kimeru, Kikamba and Kitaita.

He also speaks Sheng comfortably plus a number of international languages, including French, German and Spanish.

Nahim switches from American English to the Queen’s English, depending on his audience. In all this diversity, he lives a simple life.

Dressed in a faded blue pair of jeans, a blue and white checked light cotton shirt, pale brown leather sandals and a brown leather cowboy hat that have seen better days, he says, “My small room has basic items. I own two pairs of jeans and four cotton shirts. I do not need more.”

Nahim claims he is comfortable with his minimal earthly belongings. He is a good cook and guides his kitchen staff on how to make, and serve great meals.

His food supplies come from Nanyuki, about 120 kilometres from Samburu, but for meat, he goes all the way to Isiolo Town or slaughters a goat from his “people”.

His expert skills turn ordinary meat into many delicacies of roast, fried, stewed and steamed dishes.

On this particular day, he served us with coffee before the game drive and later, fresh fruit salad, followed by a heavy lunch-cum-supper of boiled meat and ugali.

Nahim had lived in western Kenya, Nairobi, and Lamu before settling in Samburu. He even had a stint at Kenya Airways as an aircraft engineer.

In the evening, as we relax in the open makuti (thatched) dining area, with a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other, Nahim entertains us with his adventures in the wild, how once, with morans and rangers, he pursued Turkana cattle rustlers in the night, and on another occasion, how elephants stayed in his camp for days.

He also recalls how he was initiated into the Samburu community, and tells of how during the rainy season, elephants cross the now dry Ewaso Nyiro River, or take mud baths directly in front of the camp.

Nahim recalls a 1994 episode when Mr David Mclister of the Christian Blind Mission organisation tasked him to deliver medicine in a truck from Kigali to Goma in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), after people fled the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

His co-driver, a Rwandese, developed cold feet and abandoned him on the way. However, Rwandan border forces allowed him into Goma with the drugs, thereby saving many lives.

When he briefed his boss, Mr Mclister, about the dire humanitarian situation in DRC, Mclister forbade him from speaking to the media.

In a twist of events, six months later, a friend alerted him to an article in a Canadian medical journal titled “How medicines got into Congo”, authored by David Mclister.

Mr Mclister had boasted about how he single-handedly delivered medicines safely into a war zone, something that really irked Nahim. So what did he do, I probe.

“That is a story for another day,” he says. His parting shot as we wind up our interview is for the government to work with locals in taming human-wildlife conflict that sometimes leads to loss of life.