Greetings from Kenya!

We're finally at a place with internet access, which I am so happy about because my memory banks are getting overloaded with so much to report!

The trip over was uneventful but grueling, 30 hours door-to-door. Everyone arrived safely except for the luggage of 4 of our group, the last of which finally appeared today (she was much more cheerful about it than I would have been). The night of our arrival I was so exhausted I could barely remember my own name, much less the 16 other women I was meeting for the first time. By morning, everything was much better and we had an amazing breakfast at our hotel in downtown Nairobi with the best coffee I have ever tasted -- nothing but Kenyan coffee for me from now on! It was great to see Marsha again (the founder of Dining For Women) and to meet her 13-year-old daughter Anna Lise. I had been a bit concerned how it would be since she is the only child with us, but from the moment I met her I knew it would actually be a bonus having her along -- she's articulate, engaged, friendly, and very self-assured for her age. I should have known -- she's Marsha's daughter!

Immediately after breakfast we headed out in 4 vans (called matatus here, and they are the ubiquitous form of mass transit for the entire country) and drove 6 hours up to Samburu Game Reserve. At one point, Kathleen, our tour guide, stopped our caravan to let us know that we would be staying in a different lodge than we had planned on, as the rains had come early this year, and she just found out that our original lodge had been innundated that morning by a flash flood! (The whole area was devasted, 4 lodges were wiped out, but luckily no one was killed or injured.) Fortunately, there was room for us across the river in Buffalo Springs Game Reserve, so with the required flexibility that any trip to Africa requires, we changed course and headed over there instead. It turned out to be perfectly lovely and we were all fine with the change. We stayed there 3 nights (someone asked at the desk if they had internet access and the response was "Internet?? Um, no.") and were treated both early morning and late afternoon with game drives through the preserve. Over the days was saw families of elephants (pretty similar to my top picture, in fact), gazelles, impalas, warthogs, baboons, and a number of animals I'd never heard of before in the gazelle/impala family. We saw so many giraffes that way too quickly we wouldn't even stop anymore -- "Oh, it's just some more giraffes. Let's keep going!" But it's spectacular, truly amazing, to see the animals in their own environment. The crowning piece was the day we saw first the male lion, quite close, then later two females with four small cubs. They were wrestling and playing tug-of-war with a long stick. The moms just dozed. Magical!

The best part of the trip so far, though, has definitely been the visit over to Umoja village on our second day in the Samburu region. This village is a haven for women only, who have been abused by their husbands, want to escape early marriages to much older husbands, or have been abandoned by their families because they were widowed. It was started 20 years ago by Rebecca Lolosi (sp?) and has become an educational outreach center where Umoja women go to the neighboring villages and meet with the women there to talk about women's rights, the importance of sending their daughters to school (very rare in this part of the country, although this issue is also prevalent all over the third world), and to try to end the cultural practice of female genital mutilation. As you can imagine, this does not go over very well with the men in the villages (and some of the more traditional women also) and they have had many problems with backlash and village security. But they have persevered and become fairly well-known, and host visitors groups like ours on an ongoing basis. This helps them support themselves as they charge an admission fee to the village, give a tour and discuss the history of the village, and have beautiful handicrafts for sale that the women have made.

As we first pulled in to the village, I was spellbound to see a large group of women standing at the entrance to greet us, all in their traditional clothes (which they always wear -- this was not for show) of beautiful brightly colored long dresses and ring after ring after ring of beaded necklaces. They were singing a traditional welcome song, and one by one danced towards us in welcome. (I have a video of this that I'll post when I get home.) This went on for quite some time, then we were invited beyond the walls to the inside of the village, where they brought us into a circle with them and sang more and got us to dance with them too. This village is poorer than anything I've ever encountered, except for what I had seen on the trip from Nairobi to Samburu. The homes throughout the region -- in this village and all the others surrounding -- are small huts made of sticks of wood with cow dung for roofs. In some cases as the cow dung deteriorates with the weather, they patch it with pieces of cardboard. People sleep on goatskins or cardboard -- mattresses are a real luxury. They are a pastoral people, so their food consists of milk and meat from their cattle or goats. There has been a very severe drought in Kenya over the last 3 years, in which much of the livestock has perished, making their plight even harsher. Yet they are able to find joy in their lives too -- the children are always waving at us as we go past, and smiles are quick to appear from everyone. But back to the village -- we toured their shcool where both their sons and daughters attend -- two rooms built on very barren land (as is true for the rest of the village too). The children sang for us and one young boy cried the whole time in fear -- I don't know that he'd ever seen a white person before!

These women, poor as they are, are still proud and resourceful. I struggled quite a bit after we left with being the "white woman with camera" going around taking pictures, and we talked about this quite a bit in our group as most of us felt similarly, but were assured by Kathleen that they were used to this and knew that it was a part of opening their village for a tour and that it was one of their main sources of income. But picture-taking of people here in general is something that I'm very sensitive to, and try not to be invasive as much as I'd like to document all that I'm seeing.

The journey so far is deeply rich, insightful, heart-wrenching, and mind-expanding. And there's still so much more to go! I've left out so many stories and other visits, but this is plenty for now, poor reader! If you want to see where I'm staying tonight, go to www.serenahotels.com/mountainlodge (I think!). I'll have plenty of pictures to share when I get back --sorry to say I can't upload now. Yesterday, I culled the shots I've taken already down to 655...

More at the next internet access point!