Michael ‘Miskie’ Kiboi Morris

Miskie is a young and up and coming Kenyan private guide that belongs to that smaller group of guides who came to the profession through science rather than through the vehicle. He trained with EcoTraining in South Africa, the institute that has produced many of the continent’s most respected field guides, and then went deeper rather than wider, studying ornithology through the National Museums of Kenya and tropical biology with A Rocha Kenya. He is a KPSGA Bronze-level guide, holds First Aid certification from St John Ambulance, and is an active member of Nature Kenya, the oldest conservation society in

Africa.

What that background produces is a particular kind of day in the field. Miskie guides across East Africa, through the Maasai Mara and beyond it, and he is as comfortable with a flock of migrant waders as he is with a lioness and her cubs, which is rarer than it sounds. Guests who travel with him tend to arrive wanting the big cats and leave able to name the rollers, the bee-eaters and the eagles, and to explain why the grass in one place is short and in another is long. He reads a landscape as a system rather than as a backdrop, and he has the patience to let a sighting unfold instead of rushing to the next one.

He is equally at home in the human landscape. Culture, for Miskie, is not a scheduled village visit bolted onto an itinerary but part of the same story as the wildlife, because the people living alongside these ecosystems have shaped them for as long as anyone has been watching. He will tell you what a plant is used for as readily as he will tell you its scientific name.

Colleagues who have spent time in the field with him describe the same thing: that his knowledge of the ecosystem changes how you see the whole trip, well beyond the animals in front of the vehicle. He is thoughtful company over a long day, generous with what he knows, and genuinely pleased when a guest starts spotting things for themselves.

In his own words: “Most people come to Africa to look. The work I enjoy most is teaching them to listen -

because once you can hear what is happening around you, the bush stops being scenery

and starts being a conversation.”

Based in: Kenya

Guides across: Kenya

Specialties: Birding & cultural experiences

Daily rate: $