Last Saturday, Kenyans made peace with wildlife, not because they suddenly discovered a love for giraffes, but because admission was free. And when the sign says “free”, the African heart cannot resist: everyone sets off together, as if it were Black Friday in the Serengeti. 83 thousand people!

The government had decided to abolish entrance fees to celebrate World Tourism Day. A noble, almost touching gesture: “Thank you for preserving the elephants – here's a free coupon to pet them with your car running and the horn stuck”.

And so, from six in the morning until sunset, the parks were invaded by a picnic-loving crowd, with kilometre-long queues like the A14 motorway at the Rimini toll booth at Easter, except that here the telepasses were the rangers and the barrier rose with the calm of a baobab tree. Inside, the scene was like a documentary that Attenborough would never have dared to shoot: Nairobi-Mombasa traffic relocated to the savannah, with gazelles crossing on non-existent crossings and baboons signalling traffic jams better than the traffic police.

There were rules, of course. The KWS had published guidelines with the seriousness of a Swiss ministry: “Do not get out of your cars, do not disturb the animals, do not play football among the lions, do not take selfies with the hippopotamus as if it were your drunk cousin at a wedding”. Guidelines that, of course, went unheeded: some people took off their shoes to test the water temperature in a crocodile-infested pond, others decided that Nairobi National Park was the right place to improvise a game of football, and the rangers – poor rangers – tried to restore common sense. They had as much success as a traffic warden trying to direct traffic at a Champions League final with free admission.

Ultimately, it was a triumph of natural democracy: Kenya finally showed that wildlife does not belong only to white tourists with SLR cameras, but also to local citizens armed with cool boxes, loud music and footballs. The only ones who had no say were the real hosts: the elephants, who watched the scene wondering if it was time to seek political asylum in Botswana.