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.

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

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.

I woke up and opened my eyes. It was dark and moonless outside. Stars were shining through the upper corner of our bedroom window, a sure sign it was not yet 4 am. I mentally ran through the check list of reasons I might be awake: Cold? No. Hot? No. Need to go to the bathroom? No. I looked at my watch. It was 2:58 am. Then I became aware of sounds; loud breathing, guttural grunts, munching, the occasional clunk and a branch snapping.

John, also awake, whispered from beside me “Do you hear that?” “Yeah,” I replied. “What is it?” We lay there for a minute or two listening. It got closer and louder. “Why does it sound like a toilet is flushing?” I asked, by now up on my elbows peering through the mosquito netting into the night. It is no more than 30 feet from our bedroom window to our outdoor shower. Whatever it was, it was somewhere in that scant 10 yards.

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Hang around safari guides and you quickly learn that witnessing a big cat bring down its prey is the homerun of wildlife viewing. Nature in action; raw, fast and final. Tourists pay big tips for such a memory and the accompanying photographs.

The sun was sinking toward the Borana Hills as Susie, Lynn and I headed home after a fairly successful game drive. We’d seen giraffe, rhino, oryx and the usual assortment of swala (hooved animals of the antelope variety). A family of elephants grazing in a swamp twenty feet from the road held us entranced for a good fifteen minutes. Lynn had spotted a large tortoise heading into the grass and we added a new species to our ever growing list.

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I know I’ve been remiss in writing, but sometimes there is so much going on that there is no time for reflection. My habit has been to get up when the rumble of the generator penetrates my consciousness at 6 am. I plug in the electric kettle, brew a pot of coffee and then take my mug, pad and pen to a comfortable perch on the couch. There I watch the sunlight creep over the hill across the valley, look for wildlife and write. An hour later, Rehema knocks gently on the door and enters with “Good morning, how was your night?” Then the bustle of the day begins. John and I head to the office between 9:00 and 9:30.

For the past ten days, since returning from the U.S., this routine has been interrupted by jetlag, early morning work requirements and, happily, our guests – Susie and Lynn – who often show up before 7 am with binoculars and cameras in hand ready for a morning game drive. When this happens, we quickly fortify ourselves with caffeine, grab the car keys and head out into the bush. I am transformed from neophyte Kenyan to experienced tour guide.
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The morning I left Lewa to join John in San Diego, Rehema greeted me with the question “did you hear gun shots last night?” “No,” I answered, “were there gun shots?” No one in our valley had heard anything, but the rangers who live behind us had been notified of an incident “over by the Wilderness Lodge,” about ten miles from us, close to the Lewa boundary. Lewa security suspected poachers but had not yet located a carcass.

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This post is mostly about the part of my job that involves working with women to help them increase their family incomes through bead craft. It ends with a shameless pitch for you to buy beaded coasters, key rings and Christmas decorations. Just letting you know in advance. Read on.

Elaborate beaded body decorations have been part of the pastoralist culture in Kenya for hundreds of years. For a young girl, the process of becoming “beaded” starts when she is claimed for marriage; often as an early teen around the time she is “circumcised.” Her future husband presents her with loose beads and she, in turn, creates and wears a beaded neckpiece, bracelets and earrings. Over the course of the girl’s adulthood, her beaded adornments increase until, for some, they extend from neck to diaphragm and include headpieces, ear decorations, armbands, bracelets, and anklets.

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Last Saturday, November 2, we officially entered the rainy season. I heard the steady patter of raindrops begin at about 4:00 am. By 8:00 am we had dual waterfalls cascading off the interior rooflines. A river was running through the center of our common space and out under the French doors. The important parts of the house were dry – the bed, couch and dining table – but for how long, we didn’t know. John vowed to get Lewa to fix our roof. I suggested we buy a good floor squeegee, put a plastic tarp over the bed and live with it.

That was five days ago. It has rained every day since; not steadily but certainly for multiple hours a day. Lewa maintenance came and patched half our roof on Tuesday so now our interior water features have slowed from streams to drips and we’re reasonably confident our sleeping quarters will stay dry. What we weren’t prepared for was how fast everything springs to life with moisture.

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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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