Anyone who belongs to an organization will recognize the essential elements in the following picture and quickly intuit what is going on. There is a cup of coffee, a facilitator, a flip-chart and a presenter. It is an off-site team building and strategic planning retreat. That is where John and I have been for the past two days. Globalization has brought many things to the remote corners of the world; Crest toothpaste, Cadbury chocolates and Chilean wine to name just a few. Flip charts and magic markers should be added to that list.

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A little fall of rain
Can hardly hurt me now
You’re here, that’s all I need to know
And you will keep me safe
And you will keep me close
And rain will make the roads muddy and slippery and get the car stuck, oh yeah, and make the flowers grow.

As the rainy season slowly descends upon us it is, so far, not what I expected. Every evening for the last week it has rained on Lewa but in swatches. A cloud forms, sweeps through and moistens a strip one or two kilometers wide missing the rest of the conservancy. The night before last we were blessed by our little fall of rain.
It was 5 o’clock and we were heading to the Lewa offices to pick up Kira — a visitor from the Sydney Zoo — for dinner at our place. It began to rain. I looked at Anne, “No problem, we’re in a four wheel drive vehicle and it hasn’t rained enough to cause the roads to soften up.” Off we went.
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Every once in a while it is nice to stop and savor the small sweet things in life. Today is my 60th birthday – not exactly a small sweet thing – but enough little gems have occurred today that they deserved to be savored.

At about 5:30 this morning I was sitting on the living room couch checking emails in the dim fluorescent glow of a battery powered lantern (the generator comes on at 6). I heard a munching and scrunching coming from the ceiling. That in itself isn’t unusual, straw roofs are good transmitters of animal sounds. This was loud enough, though, that it was definitely coming from indoors.

I took my trusty REI torch and directed the beam at the rafters. There was a fuzzy tail bobbing along behind the braided straw trim where the wall meets the ceiling. That darn squirrel, I thought. But then a head and body appeared with two, forward facing eyes flashing red in the light. This was an itty bitty carnivore. A galago (or bush baby) – a small nocturnal primate – stared down at me, round faced, pointy eared and fluffy. He ran around for a little while and then disappeared through one of the multitudinous gaps between our roof and walls. People spend hours trying to spot the elusive bush babies in trees. This one came right in and introduced itself.

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What would you do if you were a white-haired woman alone in your car, driving along a deserted road and a poorly dressed male stranger jogged up to your vehicle and reached for the door handle? You’d probably do the exact same thing that I did the first time it happened to me: wave him off with a “no, no” and shake of your head and then drive on, not looking back and taking a deep breath to calm you heart. That was then. Today I wouldn’t make him jog to the car. I’d notice him on the side of the road, stop and ask if he wanted a lift.

John and I are rich in transportation; when the locals hear about our two cars, their eyes pop. Our deal with The Nature Conservancy when we signed up to work with the NRT was that we’d each have our own vehicle. How else could we function? They didn’t expect us to share, did they? As it turns out, given our remote living situation, two cars really are necessary. Most days John and I go in opposite directions and need a way to get there. That being said, we are definitely sharing our transportation.

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Once or twice a week we drive into Meru Town to buy groceries. The journey is 30 rough, bouncy minutes on a dirt road followed by another 30 hair raising minutes on narrow blacktop roads passing underpowered cars and trucks that hug the center line, pedestrians, cattle and shoats, all poised to jump into traffic, ox and donkey carts, weaving bicyclists, motorcyclists and mutatus pulling in and out of traffic.

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Imagine yourself on an open arid plain, 100 miles north of the equator. It is the height of the dry season. The sun beats down relentlessly and a steady wind swirls the fine red dirt in every direction. It smells hot and acrid: dust and dung. Scraggly acacia trees dot the landscape and groups of people and animals cluster as close as they can to the trunks seeking coolness in the lacy shade. Herders with intricately embroidered caps and long sticks are separating 250 cattle into groups according to size. They dash around steering the cattle by swatting their backs and rumps and stop the frequent dashes for freedom by waving their sticks and shouting. There is a constant racket of cows braying, people chattering and the wind whistling.

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I said I would report on my trip to the livestock market. Here is Part I.

A little after 5 pm yesterday, I returned home encrusted in a layer of sweat and fine red dust. My eyes felt like they were coated in sandpaper and my lips were cracking. I was parched and exhausted. The entire way back from the airstrip, all I kept thinking was “I want a beer.” I flopped on the couch. “Will you get me a beer?” I whined to John.

“No. You should have stopped at Ngiri House on your way home and gotten one there.”

“I was too tired,” more whining. “I need a beer.”

“I am not driving a half hour each way to get you a beer!” He was rather emphatic about it.

I drank a quart of water and my brain started functioning again. A light bulb went on in my head. “Hey, I bet you could get a beer at Lewa Safari Camp. That’s only 15 minutes away,” I pleaded.

John looked at me, shook his head and a half hour later reappeared with 3 beers.

Actually it was an intense and interesting day; full of firsts.

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I had an amazing drive home today. I know there are too many pictures but here goes.

After visiting the Kilimani Primary school today I came back to Lewa via the Kisima gate for the first time. After a couple of wrong turns and stopping to ask for directions (I’m in touch with my feminine side :)) in my pigeon Kiswahili (Jambo sana. Kisima Gate? point ahead, point back, look lost and questioning, shrug holding hands up), I entered Lewa.

After a kilometer or so I passed the herd of horses that Wilderness Trails Camp uses for their trail rides. Up for a ride if you come visit Marion? I had never seen horses grazing with Giraffes before.

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If you knew what abattoir meant without having to look it up, you were ahead of me; and I now have the job of leading a livestock business. An abattoir is a slaughter house and a very necessary part of the grassland-to-market cattle supply chain.

Livestock are the backbone of the pastoralist culture and economy. Pastoralists are semi-nomadic because they must follow their cows as they forage for food. Almost 100% of pastoralists’ wealth is tied up in their animals. Whenever a family has cash they buy an animal, whenever they need cash they sell one: they sell a sheep or goat when only a small amount of money is needed – for cooking oil, grain or sugar – a cow for something major like school fees or doctor bills.

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Yesterday, I visited the Laparua and N’Talaban primary schools. I am trying to find out about the lives of the teachers and students in the schools; how effective the schools are; how they are financed; what it would be like to work or learn in that environment; special challenges in teaching in pastoralist regions and how the Lewa Conservancy Education programs impact the schools. The N’Talaban school was the most remote I have visited to date.

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