I’m not sure that we’ll ever quite get over leaving Kenya, though it was never our homeland and, by 2000, when we left, our business there was done. But we had lived in Nairobi for seven years, seen many changes as Kenya moved uneasily from one-party rule towards multi-partyism: one externally imposed and alien structure to be replaced by another alien structure, this for a nation of many diverse communities that for centuries had each their own forms of traditional law and order, far closer, I might argue, to any form of democracy that the nations of the technocratic North might think they have invented or progressed towards.
And the reason we were there at all was because Graham (as plant pathologist and food storage specialist) was working on a British Government funded crop protection project, working alongside Kenyan scientists and subsistence farmers in a bid to build in-the-field resilience against crop pests and diseases.
The project base was at the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) in Nairobi, but in the early days we did much travelling on the Mombasa highway, going back and forth between the capital and KARI’s Kiboko field station in Ukambani. Sometimes we drove the full 300 odd miles to Mombasa, sometimes less far to the Taita Hills. Mostly, though, it was the hundred mile trip that took us from the Nairobi plains at nearly 6,000 feet, down to the semi-arid lowland just north of Makindu and the Tsavo National Parks.
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Ukambani, homeland of Akamba farmers and cattle keepers, is red earth, thorn-scrub country. You start to see mighty baobabs growing here too. They rise up in a natural parkland setting that you feel you must have imagined. Giant hornbills stalk around the verges. The farther vistas, heat-hazy towards the Yatta Plateau, may be dotted red from the shukas of Maasai as they fan out with their herds across the sparse grassland. You may also spot antelope and giraffe here too. For in Kenya it is said there is more wild game outside the huge national parks than inside them. Sometimes the great trucks that plied the highway back then would collide with a giraffe, thereby providing an unexpected meat meal for nearby farming families.
Mombasa highway at Kiboko looking north – Nairobi-bound
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The giraffe in the header photo were spotted on the Kapiti Plains, south of Nairobi. We used to see ostrich, impala and gazelle on the roadside here too. But the sight of several giraffe moving across the plains, the peculiar gait that has them stepping in some shared slow rhythm all their own stopped the heart.
We were so very lucky to see such sights. Even now there’s a catch in my breath.
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Tish Farrell 
okay now trying via the reader as the WP gremlins are doing something very weird this evening to me. This is a beautiful post Tish, no wonder you didn’t want to leave. Wonderful memories and amazing squares .
Many thanks, Becky. And curses on WP gremlins whatever they’re up to.
Took me 4 attempts to leave a comment. Every time it tried it came up with my username and told me that although I was signed in under that name I needed to sign in under a different name to leave a comment?!! Thank goodness for the reader.
Well many thanks for putting up with all that nonsense, Becky – just to read my post 🙂
when I have my Squares hat on I won’t give up!
Squaring up, eh!
Square giraffes, Tish! There’s something quite unnatural about that, but oh, what golden days you had.
There were indeed many golden days, Jo. Though lots of grey ones between June and August which people may find surprising. We used to have log fires at night.
🔥😁
I enjoy reading and looking at your now life but these are forever my faves.
Many thanks for that comment, Beverly
What a great opportunity you had, and you have pictures and memories to keep it alive.
It was a wonderful opportunity, Anne. I think I’m still processing it 🙂
😊
Pictures are like paintings! Must visit Kenya in my lifetime:)
Cheers, Bruce.
What fabulous and special memories. I’d love to read a fuller account.
Thanks, Margaret. Here’s a brief account of how I ended up in Kenya: https://tishfarrell.com/2014/02/14/valentines-day-runaway/
Ooh, I’ll look forward to reading that later today. Thanks!
Africa gets into your blood.
I think that sums it up, Jude.
Most ancient of all our homelands, you wonder, Trish, if we all ‘know’ this place and these animals who co-evolved with us? It all passes into brain and heart where, perhaps, it always has been.
Never a war with Ethiopia, Trish. Blessed country.
I think you’re right, Sarah. As you know well, the Great Rift is the place we humans were born. We know it elementally, all the way back through our past.
I have had the pleasure of visiting Africa a few times but never for any length of time. Never long enough to get to know it well.
I did that with a few other places though and I understand, very well, how it can enrich your life. Cheers, Tish, I love your Africa posts.
Many thanks for loving my Africa posts, Thom. Tx
Giraffes are beautiful animals. You were lucky to see them in their natural habitat. Great memories for you!
Beautiful!
Even now there’s a catch in my breath too Tish. I can’t imagine how wonderful it must have been to live there for all those years, how you’d start to feel planted, and begin to understand the land the people the very air you breathed. I’m not surprised you never quite got over it.
I do love your Africa posts.
Alison
I think you summed things up so well, Alison. And yes, down to the air we breathed and the aromatic scent of fever trees and acacia wood smoke. The smell of the dust even.
What special memories here Tish 😍 I love yo see giraffes, they seem so comfortable and at home in their environment, at one with the land.
At one with the land – yes indeed, Sarah.
Giraffes are such elegant creatures aren’t they? When you see them in zoos they just look sort of silly, even kitsch, and very awkward in such tiny enclosures. But that’s in part because we stole their marvelous patterns and turned them into sofas and cheap rugs. Hidden by dappled foliage you hardly see them, the camouflage is seamless, and once out crossing the wide savanna they cruise so effortlessly, almost floating by, as serpentine as it’s possible for any mammal to be.
Cruise is exactly the word, James – sublime in their own landscape.