Monthly Archive for March, 2010

“For Joan, everything that mattered most to her was centred on the lake but, even there, life was changing – Naivasha’s fertile soil and warm climate were ripe for exploitation. Joan’s neighbours realised that roses would thrive in the area, and demand for the blooms was high.

“New technology, chemical fertilisers, pesticides and good air transportation meant they could be sold anywhere in the world, but this booming new industry brought economic and ecological problems in its wake.

“Joan decided to take action. She went on daily poacher patrols and wrote of her increasing frustration, intensified by the ineptitude of the police and government agencies in coming up with any solution. Every poacher on the lake soon knew that she was the key player in stopping them from feeding their families.”

“The night of 12 January, 2006 was clear and moonlit. At 1.30am, two men, one carrying an AK-47 semi-automatic rifle, crept into the compound. Awakened by the men demanding in Swahili that she open the door, Joan used her mobile phone to call her security consultant, John Sutton, who was on an assignment in Tanzania. ‘John, they’re back,’ she said in a whisper. ‘Turn off your light,’ Sutton said. ‘Get on the floor and into the bathroom.’ Previously, at Mr Sutton’s suggestion, steel doors had been put up in the bathroom for this very purpose.

“Sutton called the police. Then his phone rang again. Joan’s voice was frantic and trembling. He heard gunshots. ‘John, help, John, help’. Screaming in Swahili that they would fill her with so many holes she’d ‘look like a sieve’, the two men pumped bullets through the glass and the bars of her bedroom window. Then the phone went dead. Joan, who had been shot several times, died from massive bleeding. Too much in love with the lake to leave it and too stubborn to surrender, she had made a last stand on her land. What she left behind would tell the story of what she had tried to accomplish.”

read more: daily mail