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All About Agwata Kenya Safaris -The most frustrating experience in my life
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This is my experience, shared with other two volunteers from Australia, when dealing with this “organization”.
I am Trini Contreras, from Spain. I have a Bachelor’s Degree in Environmental Science and I decided to do environmental volunteer work in Kenya with Agwata Kenya Safaris. It was a disaster all together and for all of us. From the beginning, dealing with the people from the organisation was a very difficult task. But that was nothing compared to what was waiting for me once in Kenya.
I paid all my fees on June 2006. I arrived in Kenya on January 12th, 2007. On my first day there I got to talk to Herman Witkins, the Director, and he told me that my project had been changed since October 2006 and that it was 3 times more expensive than what I had originally paid for (why anybody hadn’t told me anything before???... I don’t know, neither does Herman). I told Herman that I did not have all that money and after he went rudely crazy on me (he even said that I was not worth a volunteer!!) I asked for my money back. He treated me very bad, said that it was not an option and he gave me the “solution” to pay a smaller amount and instead of three months just stay with the project for one month (I felt very bad, I had been sending emails to the organization right before getting to Kenya and nobody ever told me anything about this change, I had been saving for this trip for a long time, I was very excited to go to Africa, I left my job to do this, and when I get there I am told that I am not worth a volunteer because I don’t have “right away” 1500 British pounds to pay the organization). I thought about it and to pay in order to stay that one month since I was already in Kenya and had paid a lot of money that I did not want to loose.
When I talked to my Australian partners about all that, they explained me that on their first day in Kenya, they talked to Herman, and he said that the company was in a difficult financial situation and that Herman needed to borrow from them, two thousand British pounds (¿? In total we had paid the organization more than 3000 British pounds, a lot of money in Kenyan shillings, and we didn’t even have food in the house, where did all that money went? What did they need an extra 2000 pounds for?). Anyway, they signed a contract with Herman and were told to have that money back on February 2007. Nowadays they are living on London, and as of today, April 13, 2007, don’t have their money back. They have tried to talk to Herman but they get no response. Legally they could do something about it, but Kenya is such a corrupt country that unless you have money and contacts, there’s no chance you’ll win a law suit against an organization.
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Well, let me also tell you about the “project”. After the organization had got all the money they wanted from us, day after day we discovered that there was nothing organized to start the project. We stayed for 8 days in Nairobi, in Paul’s place (he was the Kenyan field manager) with no food. We were just left there all day long, with nothing to do; we couldn’t leave the house after 6.30 pm, because it’s dangerous. We had to pay for our own food, and Paul even borrowed money for rental cars to apparently work on the project setup that we never got back.
After putting a lot of pressure on Paul to leave to the Park and start the project, he rented a car to go there. But he did not rent a 4x4 car (as he had done when he had to go by himself to the park to apparently set up everything for our arrival), he rented a small utility car, put six of us in it (himself, two of his friends from whom he continuously borrowed money from for gas and others –again where is the money we paid?- and the three of us) with our backpacks in it and he left to Shompole park at 9:00 pm on a Tuesday night:
At 9pm we leave to Shompole, but on our way we had a flat tire (that car was not suitable for that unpaved road), therefore we got stocked in the middle on the bush, with no cell phone reception, to change the tire, (Paul had previously commented that getting stocked in a road like that was very dangerous). We drove all the way to shompole on a spare tire, overnight and with the risk of getting stock again with no more spare tires, no cell phones. We finally got to Shompole at 3am. We got two rooms in the ICIPE research center, next door to where the project house was with the condition of leaving by 10 am in the morning. Paul then tells us that he has to go to Magadi (the closest town) so he can get the tire fixed first thing in the morning and be back early. When we wake up in the morning we pack everything to be ready when Paul arrives to move into the project house. But it's
lunch time and Paul is not back. ICIPE people gave us lunch. And then it's dinner time and Paul is not back, again ICIPE people fed us. It's time to go to sleep and we have no keys to the project house yet because Paul is not back, finally ICIPE people let us stay in their room again, and all this may not seem that bad but imagine yourselves in the middle of a wild area, with lions running around, where the closest town to get food and water from is at 14 km. with no car, no cell phone, nobody that you know, and no means of communicating with the indigenous people around you. Paul finally got to shompole at 4am on the next day.
I was very frustrated and I decided to go back to Spain. I went to Nairobi and changed my flight to leave within two days. Hinda and Matt (my two Australian friends) decided to stay (they wanted to get their money back) and after 10 days I got an email from them saying that they had left Shompole after one more week in hell and they were back in Nairobi waiting to get their money back. As I said before they left to London, don’t have their money and Herman doesn’t respond their emails or phone calls anymore.
The last thing I want to tell you is to think twice before you get involved with this people, they might promise you a lot of things and not as expensive as other organizations, but as far as I am concerned it’s all lies. If you want to talk about it or want more information you can email any of us or call me on my cell:
Hinda Crosbie: crosbieh@buzzacott.co.uk
Matthew Fisher: mattf57@hotmail.com
Trini Contreras: trinicr@hotmail.com, phone: 34 (country code) 667 26 83 26
If you want prove of all this I keep all the emails that we sent to Herman Witkins and his responses. You can also try to call the organization in their USA phone number, it’s never worked. Their website not very trustworthy and their USA address does not make sense (I lived in New Jersey for 5 years).
It’s sad that people like them do this to volunteers that want to help and contribute a little to make this world a bit fairer for everybody. It’s been the most frustrating experience in my life.
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