Day 215 of chaos, violence, mayhem, shooting etc or day 338 -Saturday 12th August 

Quite a few shots heard in the night by the security teams – we think probably from Lombara.

No breaks again in boundary stone wall although a small herd of cattle had come in across the river on the Lombara / Pesi section  very early this morning and left around dawn. This is the same area as the contact a few days ago.

Cattle and sheep all went through the sprayrace for their weekly bath and are slowly gaining condition and generally looking much better – a few of the older cows still not looking good but hopefully with time they will.

While on patrol came across 2 big herds of elephant who from a distance are pretty calm, they are causing quite a lot of damage to the Eucalyptus plantation which is frustrating but with all the chaos around  at least they are semi safe here. Patrol teams followed up on the 7 suspected poachers and found and collected 3 snares and saw some blood and hair  -evidence that zebra had been caught and butchered leaving very little behind. 

Still large numbers of livestock on Lombara and GG and Kieni and sad news from Kihiti -during the stock theft of 3 head of cattle the owner was shot dead by the thugs. 

But not all is gloom and doom, with all the rain the grass is growing and the wild flowers are amazingly beautiful and all the normal cattle sleeping sites are covered in a thick carpet of  ‘saget’ – a wild vegetable which despite all the staff and us collecting bunches we  can’t even make a dent in it.