Guest Post by Julie Curtis:

I sleep beneath a mosquito net, under a blanket that was originally intended to be a garment for a Masai warrior, in a house with no indoor shower, and electricity that cuts out at 10:30pm and then whirs noisily on again at 6am, filling the room with light if I left the switch in the on position when it quit, which I do, because I can’t remember which position is “off”. There are bush babies in the trees outside my window, enormous white cricket-like bugs plastered to the windows dreaming of getting in, and who knows what else roaming around at night. It seems unfair to expect the wi fi to work here. And yet, it kind of does. Enough to make me believe in the possibility of it. Enough to allow my clients in Japan to expect me to meet their quick-turn copywriting deadlines.

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Yesterday, Mango Bob and I were driving into the office. As we came near the swamp Bob noticed three safari vehicles off to our left. Wondering what they had found, I stopped and we grabbed for our always present binoculars. There in front of the lead vehicle was a large healthy Cheetah.

Our first sighting of the Cheetah. Watching out for safari vehicles is a good technique for finding things of interest.

Guest Post by Julie Curtis

The smell is a mix of something burning, exhaust, and food of some kind, maybe meat. The highway outside the sliding door honks and whines all night, past a cylindrical building with its roof angled like a lipstick and letters on top of that spelling out “INTEGRITY CENTRE.” Jet lag clutches the right side of my forehead like talons, and my feet, swollen from three consecutive long haul economy flights, beg to be elevated.

So I skip the complimentary breakfast they serve at the Sarova Panafric, which the bellman, Collins, highly recommends and hopes I will rate favorably on Trip Advisor. He spent more than a few minutes last night telling me which Kenyan foods to try at the buffet, adding that I really ought to wash it all down with beer.

My driver, Sammy, will be here early to take me to the little regional airport where I will board a 16-seat flight from Nairobi to Lewa Downs. I am too tired to shower, but I showered last night when I arrived, so I should be okay.

Kenya’s golden Integrity Center

About once or twice a week, I lie awake at night pondering the scale of the task I volunteered to take on last summer. How on earth, I worry, am I going to keep my growing list of fledgling businesses moving forward? When we arrived in September, that list consisted of livestock trading, bead craft and micro-lending. Tourism hovered on the horizon. There were business plans for wild silk and bananites seed processing sitting on my desk. Then came mangos: 40,000 metric tons or 93,000,000 of them rotting on the ground in a poor conservancy on the Tana River. Then fish: boat loads of them freshly caught and spoiling on the beaches of our coastal conservancies, all for the want of ice and refrigeration. The pastoralist herders in the NRT conservancies just south of Somalia and those in the Turkana region below the South Sudan want access to reliable and fair markets for their cows, sheep and goats. “Green” brokers are hot to harvest carbon credits from our conservancies’ vast grasslands. I’m sure there are more coming. What’s a girl to do?

Pray (and make calls) and Angels volunteer.

Angels appear

Every once in a while things are said that we would never have heard in Minnesota

“The elephants tore up the plumbing again!”

“John, can you hear the running water?” Anne called out at 5:00 am. Wearily climbing out of bed I joined her to investigate. “The elephants tore up the plumbing again!” I sighed. I walked past the fire pit, ducked and squeezed up a short narrow path through the brambles to the water tank and turned off the water supply to the entire compound. I went back to bed.

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Small biting ants are officially the most irritating animal I’ve encountered in Kenya.

An ant army in the kitchen.

I woke up this morning, as usual, to the generator’s beat. It was still pretty dark outside, but I figured I could see well enough to spot any predators lurking in the bush. I slipped on my flip flops and padded out to the toilet without bothering to bring along a flashlight. My mistake. Within a nanosecond of sitting down on the pot, stinging sensations erupted on my feet and calves. What the heck! The biting and pain spread rapidly up my legs onto my seat and then onto my arms and shoulders. I started swatting at the unseen attackers and quickly realized they were ants – and they were everywhere. Unfortunately, when you’re doing your business in the morning, it isn’t that easy to leap up and run. I was frantic by the time I got back to the bedroom, leaping around, ripping off my PJ’s and squashing ants on every surface of my body. John lay there laughing. When he went out to the bathroom he took along a big can of Doom Power Insect Spray to clear the way. I’m going out to surround the toilet enclosure with hot ash, the local remedy for an ant army.

Use your imagination.

Last week I visited all the schools in Biliqo Bulesa, a conservancy northeast of Lewa, large in area and small in population. My driver, cook and I packed up our camping gear, food for a week, plenty of water and headed out. One hour of tarmac road and four hours on dirt found us in Merti. We spent the first night in a small hotel. I had the expensive room, Ksh 600 ($7.20) with indoor plumbing. Simon, the driver, and Faith the cook stayed in the Ksh 300 rooms. They had the better deal. Their board walls with gaping holes, paneless window openings and thatch roof let in a cool breeze while I sweltered in my block construction with sheet metal roof which absorbed and retained the daytime desert heat.

My room was in the white building in the background. Simon and Faith stayed in rooms to the right of the shaded terraces. Faith cooked us a dinner of canned corned beef and shredded cabbage. We didn’t get to share in the goat the man was skinning.

If you haven’t looked at it in a while you might try a quick gander. We now have 40 different bird species pictures that we have taken in Kenya.