Home Sweet Home

We live in a cottage in Afrika. It is perched on the side of a hill, surrounded by acacia and grasslands, facing Mount Kenya. Our nearest neighbor is five miles away over a 4-wheel drive only road.

It is a one bedroom, thatched roof cottage built as a guest house for Anna Merz, the godmother of Kenya’s rhino protection movement. The main house consists of two, peaked circular huts connected by an arc of windows on one side and three sides of a rectangle on the other. A large fireplace dominates one side of the living room. The kitchen is a seven by ten foot outbuilding three steps from the front door. Our shower and toilet are in separate, rough-stone, circular enclosures about 50 feet up a rise from the bedroom side of the house. Half of the wall on one side of the toilet enclosure is missing. Instead of windows we have a prime, open air wildlife viewing spot. The kitchen and bathroom have running water.

Electricity comes from an old, oil-encrusted, diesel generator we have scheduled to operate from 6 am to 9:30 am and from 6:00 pm to 10:00 pm. After 10 pm the incessant drone of the diesel engine ceases and we run on flashlight power. Hot water comes from a rusty, dented tank up the hill under which a wood fire is lit every morning at 5:30 am. Once the flames go out there is no more water heated until the next day. It’s first come first serve for the hot water. On my turn this morning it ran out just as I put conditioner in my hair.

John using up the hot water.

The first time we drove out here, the remoteness and isolation scared us. Now it feels familiar.

From the front door.

We are still not quite comfortable, though, with heading outside to the toilet in the middle of the night. Yesterday, about 10:15 pm., right after the generator went off, we heard a loud, sinister growl come from very close to the house. It sounded like it was right outside the bedroom’s glass doors. John was in the dark living room talking to his mother. I was in bed under the mosquito netting reading by REI headlamp. With visions of some large animal crashing through the glass, I jumped up, switched off my light and whispered “did you hear that?” “Yea,” John whispered back, still talking to his Mom. We then started creeping around the house peering out the windows trying to see what it was. It was getting close to bed time and the day’s final bathroom visit loomed. The sound happened three times before we finally spotted it: a waterbuck (large elk or reindeer-like animal) right outside the window. Phew, a trip to the toilet was possible.

We’re finding that it isn’t just big cats that make loud and scary noises. Big hoofed animals do too.

Our Bedroom

The hike to the bathroom.