No filters, no enhancements, just my phone and a lot of luck. Maasai Mara. #kenya #photo

While spending three months in Kenya this summer it wasn't all work. A safari to the Maasai Mara and later to taking my parents to the Ark and Lake Elementaita. Giraffe Leopard cape buffalo It was the start of wildebeest migration so they were everywhere. elephants lions ostrich zebra At the ark. with a waterhole bringing the animals right outside the window. Lake Elementaita #kenya #travel

On May 18th, I left for three months to the Kenyan village where I lived for two years in the Peace Corps. I went with funds from Water Charity to start a business making interlocking stabilized soil bricks and build 10 water tanks using said bricks. This is their story. Week one Observations after 17 years away. No person has changed they are all as generous and hospitable and caring as they were 17 years ago when I left. Many I meet in the street talk of being at our pre-w

So in my other life apart from writing I was a Peace Corps volunteer. Through a series of events I am going back to the village where I served from !997-1999. The water situation has gotten worse in the last 17 years and with funding from Water Charity I will be going to work on getting a business started making pressed stabilized bricks. They are interlocking and curved making water tank building easy. For three months I'll be living the way I did once and once again hopin

Everyone always hears of the beautiful landscapes and the abundance of wildlife that fill the national parks of Kenya. Iconic names that fill your mind with images even if you’ve never seen them in person. Maasai Mara perhaps the most well known, the Kenyan side of the Serengeti. But the standards of beauty in a country where you’re surrounded by the Rift Valley and Lions, and Elephants are just a different as the land. With 42 tribes making up the Kenyan fabric though sa

Say African food and you get a myriad of options from Arabic inspired North Africa and the coast of East Africa to Maasai drinking blood and milk, Spicy Ethiopian to San Bushmen eating what they find the same as they have for thousands of years. While the cities might sport as modern a kitchen as you can find, the countryside still cooks over an open fire. Where I lived in Kenya the traditional kitchen was a room separate from the rest of the house, with thatched high roofs.

Driving south toward Kamburu dam on the only paved road you will soon enter the traditional area of another tribe. Mbeere The Mbeere are a close cousin of the Embu and share many cultural traditions. Mbeere district is divided up into 4 divisions with major market centers in Siakago, Kiritiri, and Ishiara. There are several smaller ones as well. Siakago is by far the most cosmopolitan with English and Swahili being spoken readily. The others however will be manned by thos

South of Embu, Kenya about 30 kilometers is the small market town of Kiritiri surrounded by bright red soil. Shaped like a square with the market in the center, a ring of shops circle the sellers of everything available in the area. One side of the only paved road in the district holds all the food while the other covers the used clothing market and everything else. Radiating like spokes off each corner are the only other streets that vanish into the scrub acacias not far out