About Ann Nyambura Githaiga

I was twelve years old when I decided what I was going to be.

My uncle was an ornithologist. He studied the flamingos at Lake Nakuru National Park, and sometimes he took me along. While he counted and measured birds at the water's edge, my attention wandered to everything else in that park — the rhino, the buffalo, the lion, the leopard. I stood there and made myself a promise: one day I would work in a place like this.

I kept it.

By 2010 I was a Master's fellow in Tsavo, one of the largest protected areas in Africa, studying how elephants, black rhino and giraffe share the food in a single landscape. Field research is less elegant than it sounds. I have been chased by a black rhino while collecting dung samples. I have been bitten by scorpions and mango flies while camping out in the Tsavo bush. I fought tsetse flies through a whole research season in Ruma National Park. And I once threw up in a small aeroplane, mid-flight, while counting wildlife for a national census.

"I would do all of it again."

Later I worked across the Laikipia, Samburu and Isiolo landscapes, helping rangers and communities find ways to live peacefully alongside wildlife. I have an MSc in Natural Resources Management from Egerton University, and I have spent most of my adult life in love with African wildlife.

The books began somewhere much quieter. I was looking for activities to keep my son busy over the school holidays, could not find what I wanted, and ended up making it myself. Then I made more. I learned something that holiday that I still work from: children learn best when it feels like play.

Today I write, illustrate and publish my own books from Nairobi. I make picture books like Bambee the Busy Bee and Milo the Marvellous Meerkat. I make activity books like The Ultimate Kenya Challenge. I made a counting book in English and Swahili called 123... on Safari. I make card decks and jigsaw puzzles too.

The twelve-year-old standing by that lake would have loved these books. I make them for her, and for every child like her.

The journey

1. Age 12 Lake Nakuru National Park — a promise made.
2. 2010 Master's fellow in Tsavo — elephants, rhino, giraffe, and one very fast black rhino.
3. 2010s Laikipia, Samburu and Isiolo — helping communities live alongside wildlife.
4. MSc Natural Resources Management, Egerton University.
5. Later Son's school holidays — couldn't find the right book, so made one.
6. Today Writing, illustrating and publishing children's books about Africa.