Over the weekend I experienced something most people in the West would never even imagine. I am honoured and grateful and feel more privileged than these words will ever express.
Living here in Kenya has ignited an expansion of my understanding of people, culture and relationships. My understanding of this planet and how humanity survives has grown beyond my imagination and what has been revealed to me has left me in awe. My love for humankind and it’s welfare has grown exponentially in recent years and my recent excursion to the Kenyan countryside was no exception.
My dearest and most beautiful friend took me to her grandparents last home. The place where they retired and spent the last days of their lives. We took Mombasa road out of Nairobi and headed East for about an hour or so, turned off the main road and wound our way through the beautifully terraced hills of Kamba land. We couldn’t drive right to the house so we parked the car and walked down a few hundred metres. And there, with the beauty of a vista only the land where human life began can offer, was the hand built home of her grandparents. The simplicity. The beauty.
The hills were dotted with homesteads. People walked up and down the red-soiled paths carrying those things vital to their survival - food, firewood, babies. Some bare foot, some shod. A radio played in the distance. Birds sang and fluttered by.
The damp soil from a recent rain enriched the smell of the air. The locals told us they were now ready to plant - maize and beans. Coffee plants scattered across the hillside, the weeds quietly being tilled by hand.
I could sense a harmony of human life and nature. A balance like I have never sensed before. In my country, the weather can be very harsh and not all of the land is fertile. Growing season lasts a couple of months and the majority of the year is left to the frigidity of mother nature. The balance of life and nature is quite different. People live far apart and have gigantic farms of an industrial nature. But here there seemed to be an equilibrium with nature all the time - each family with their own plot that sustains them.
The view around the homestead.
The homestead itself. Abandoned now but still standing strong.
No corporate greed out here. No industrialization of the nation. Not here. This community has not bowed down to the almighty giants of our economic structure. This is life at it's roots. Sometimes we just have to re-connect.
The coolest buses ever! This was on the way there from Nairobi.
My chauffeur
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| On the way - flat and dry landscape, great for cement plants. |
