October 21, my seven-week vacation in the USA was over. I climbed aboard Delta flight 258 at 2:30 pm. After enduring seven and a half hours in the air, five hours sitting in Schiphol airport, eight more hours traversing Europe, the Mediterranean and northern Africa, waiting through customs and immigration where they took my temperature to make sure I wasn’t importing Ebola, I was back in Kenya. The trip was one I have done many times and is quite routine by now, but something felt different. This sense of routine gone awry continued.

I met Sammy, my usual driver. He drove me to the Pan Afric hotel where I was greeted warmly, had a chicken sandwich and beer for dinner, woke the next morning to the Pan Afric breakfast buffet, showed my hotel receipt to the security guard so he would let me out of the hotel and once again met Sammy for the trip to Lewa.

Lewa waiting for the rains.

I’ve learned a new term; “people at the bottom of the pyramid.” Among poverty researchers and developmental economists it means the poorest of the poor, people who exist on less than $1 per day. It even has an acronym; PBP. This is the target population for hundreds of charities. PBP are the individuals and households that foundations and grant makers want most to uplift with the programs they fund. Last week I submitted two grant applications to the African Enterprise Challenge Fund. The projects forecast income benefits to over 100,000 PBP. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they will be favorably reviewed.

At the bottom of the pyramid? Husband and wives.

After two months of silence, TenCenturies is back on line. Our hiatus coincided with a six-week return to the United States to visit family, start construction on our new house and re-acquaint ourselves with the biking routes in Maine and Minneapolis. This trip home was originally meant to mark the end of our African adventure; the return flight on a one-year round-trip ticket. Life rarely unfolds as you expect. Back in April, when my main mission was raising money to scale up NRT’s livestock trading business, we agreed to extend our commitment for an additional nine months. Investors tend to be more willing to commit funds when they’re confident in management and know who’s running the show. Saying I would be at NRT for another four months (May-August) but after that who knew wasn’t particularly reassuring. The new schedule gives us time to find a successor and make a smooth transition to new leadership.

In case anyone is interested, I’ll be posting that job opportunity soon. If you know anyone who might want to spend a year or two as CEO of NRT Trading, share this blog post. It’s a great job, the living conditions are amazing and the experience is life changing. NRT Trading has received sufficient investment to keep life exciting for years to come. And, there is no malaria and no Ebola here.

100 miles in one day is a lot more fun with friends. Century #9.

Guest post by Doug Matson

Fear is good. Okay, not always – sometimes fear puts blinders on your mind and you can’t see the big picture. But all-in-all, Mother Nature knew what she was doing when she invented fear. Don’t sweat the little stuff when there is something big, bad, and out to get you. Something like Bill.

Bill is a solitary bull African (aka Cape) Buffalo. He’s old, grizzled, smart, and probably in a bad mood most of the time since he once was in charge but now the young males have chased him away from the breeding herd. Honestly, I’d be seriously cranky, too. African Buffalo are known to European visitors, or Mzungu, as “black death” due to their unpredictable nature and sinister coloration. They are included in the famous list of “big-five” most-dangerous animals for a game hunter (or photo tourist) to bag and are purported to trample and kill around 200 people in Africa yearly – making them equally as dangerous as hippos.

In Africa, you aren’t safe on land or in the water. A big male Cape Buffalo can charge at 35 mph, weigh between 1500 – 2000 pounds, have a shoulder height of 5 foot 7, and measure 11 feet long. The coolest feature of a Mbogo (or Nyati) is its horns. A full rack fuses at the center and is impenetrable by rifle fire. It extends from the center of their forehead, curls stylishly down below their eyes and then sweeps regally upward in twin scythes of death above their head. The wingspan for a “big” male is above 42-inches wide (with the record being 64-inches). Bill was big. I’m not going to ask him to let me measure his horn girth but from his photos we can estimate that given his ears are 3-foot wide (a typical proportion) then his horn span could be as much as 63-inches. This, of course, is irrelevant. He’s a VW minibus with attitude.

Bill is actually stunningly gorgeous: raw power incarnate and an embodiment of the majestic pastoral savannah. If that’s what over-the-hill looks like, let me join the club. But look into his eyes and all pretenses of vistas across endless equatorial plains vanish. What shines out is malice tainted with the assurance that all must recognize that HE is legislator, chief jurist, and executioner in this valley. This is Africa; eat or be eaten.

Buffalo Bill surveys his domain.

By Marion Usselman

One of the many things Anne is working on these days is trying to move her beading project to a state where it is a profitable business that can provide a stable source of income for traditional pastoralist Kenyan women. Last month 1,000 women made money through NRT Trading by creating beaded products. The most productive woman earned $33 in the month, which was the pay for making 14 pencil pots. That doesn’t seem like much, but it can pay the school expenses for one primary school child for a year.

Women at the Westgate bead market

For all you bird lovers out there, we added about 25 new birds. We also corrected some spelling and numbering errors.

Thanks to Doug and Chris Matson for some of the new pictures and their expertise in identifying them.

By Marion Usselman

Pam and I arrived on August 4th for a twelve day visit to Lewa. She and I had not planned anything past actually getting here, since that part seemed daunting enough and we’re both perfectly capable of happily hanging out and going with the flow. Anne, being now the veteran of many visits by friends and family and also being Anne, had a substantial list of possible activities planned. One was a trip to “the Bead Market”.

I knew about the beaded products created by the local pastoral women and had ordered a bunch of coasters and Christmas tree ornaments from Anne last fall. And since I religiously read the Ten Centuries blog, I knew about the labor disputes in the spring and had seen plenty of pictures of the traditional Masaai and Samburu women. By the time of this outing, we had also experienced a number of different Kenyan marketplaces. We had driven though the Kenyan countryside buying fruits and potatoes from roadside stands…

Buying 24 mangos

Roadside potatoes

There are two types of travelers; those who plan and those who don’t. John and I are solidly in the second category. When we set off on a new adventure we tend to have a rough itinerary and places to stay. Beyond that we pack our bags using a “go anywhere, any time of year for any length of time with carry-on luggage only” packing list and head for the airport. I have a conscious policy of not setting expectations, preferring the surprise of discovery to the risk of being let down. John likes to live in the moment, trusts his ability to cope and happily accepts whatever comes his way. When we left for Rwanda last week to see the gorillas with our friends Chris and Doug Matson, it is fair to say that neither of us had thought much about the trip.

Kigali, capital of Rwanda

As we flew out of Nairobi I was vaguely nervous about Rwanda, my impression of the country having been set during the 1994 genocide where the Hutus brutally slaughtered a million Tutsis in 100 days of unfathomable violence. Given that level of devastation, how much progress was possible in 20 years? It turns out an amazing amount. Without commenting on whether Rwandan President Paul Kagame is a dictator using intimidation and death squads to stay in power or, as Bill Clinton described him, “one of the greatest leaders of our time,” Rwanda is transformed. Kigali tops the charts as one of the safest and cleanest African capitals. Littering is illegal (think Singapore), the infrastructure new and growing and if you ask anyone if they are Hutu or Tutsi they will respond “we are one.” We stayed overnight in Kigali in a sprawling red-brick hotel. The next day we visited the Genocide Memorial – a purposely blunt and disturbing reminder of the 1994 events — then set out for Rwanda’s Volcano National Park and the gorillas.

Entering the Kigali Genocide Memorial where 250,000 Tutsi are buried.

By Phil Curtis

That children are children everywhere, and seem to share innate characteristics that bond them to each other and make them endearing to adults, is one of the more gratifying things to emerge from our 10 days visiting Lewa and some of its surrounding communities. This trip has been a transformative experience in many respects – from the wildlife which Anne and John have already documented so well (although it’s hard to comprehend how close the animals are until you actually experience it, and there’s always something new for you who haven’t yet visited: the five-cheetah charge on a gazelle was a first), to the days spent with Maasai and Samburu warriors, the open-air market in Meru and the always breathtaking Lewa scenery – but a major highlight was our visit to the MCK N’tumbri School about 7-8 km outside the Lewa gates.

The school has 320 students in grades 1-8, and most of those in grades four and above are boarding students. In many respects, the differences between MCK N’tumbri School and an American primary/middle school couldn’t be more stark: dirt everywhere that there isn’t a building, classrooms that lack electricity, no computers anywhere, outdoor latrines for everyone, huge (50-60 student) classes, no choice for lunch (you get one of the Kenyan staples with meat twice a week and are happy for it), and make-shift instructional materials like learning English from old magazines – and everyone has a different magazine. But underneath the appearance of deprivation is an infectious spirit, enthusiasm, friendliness and curiosity that is both heartwarming and reason for optimism.

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Last Friday, Phil Curtis (Anne’s brother), his wife Leslie, stepdaughter Katie and I drove through Lewa to the West Gate and onto Borana, a privately owned conservancy abutting Lewa. Owned by the Dyer family since the ’20’s, the 32,000 acres are home to much the same wildlife as Lewa. Ranching, several lodges and private residences support Borana’s conservation activities.

Entering Borana we forded a river and wound our way over hills and through gullies, climbing around 1,000 feet, until we reached the Borana escarpment. For Lion King fans, we passed an enormous rock on the way up which was the inspiration for Pride Rock.

Pride Rock