A dream come true

It is now eight years since we met and fell in love while visiting this magical country Kenya.

Both fragile at the time. Relieved to find another spirit with the same passion for this place, sharing similar feelings of home and adventure. And with the same idealistic hopes for a better future for people here. Having different approaches but still the same vision.

We spent days together on the road and knew we were meant to be. Loving every hour bumping along roads and no roads, sliding in and pulling out of mud, having dinners in nairobi restaurants and tea in his village. He went back to Norway, I went back to Sudan.
He moved out, I moved in. We got Sara.

 

 

 

 

Not an easy journey as everybody knows. And here we are again, in magical Kenya. Still together, two daughters, two sons. Still the same passion for the continent and its peoples. Not so different approaches anymore either; my «development» approach changing towards his «business» approaches as much as these are expanding to include social perspectives.
 

 

 

We have been dreaming of a life here, at the foot of Ngong Hills. And we made a dream come true these last months and have enjoyed every minute of it. So far we have driven over 6000 kms and spent most weekends on safari. And a few weeks before we are going back to normal life in Norway we are making another dream come true:

 

                                        Taking over a safari camp in Masai Mara

                                                                     

                                                                Amani Mara

           Amani Mara, a small lodge in Olare Orok, a small conservancy bordering the Masai Mara   National Reserve, one of the truly most amazing places in the world. Where movies are casted, where the amazingly varied landscape and vast grasslands North in the Mara-Serengeti eco-system is home to the incredible diversity of species and sheer number of wildlife found here.

Just the bird list in Masai Mara exceeds 450 species…

        Amani means peace in Swahili/Arabic and this must be what peace was meant to be.  

The quietness is addictive and after a week without a sign of car or man for that matter, without TV or wifi and sleeping in tents all restlessness is gone. No need for yoga here, there is no urge to go anywhere else, to do anything else or be anyone else.

The camp is not fenced so we have three young masai boys watching the camp, and every night one of them sits outside our tent. To chase away elephants or a buffalo astray. In the morning we wake up to see zebras, buffalos, antilopes, giraffes, baboons in the amazing scene in front of us. Like a movie screen. It would be boring to list all the animals seen from the deck, but waking up to see the hippos warming up lying on their round backs in the sun across the river beneath is hilarious. And they’re less than hundred meters away. One day a group of hyenas are sharing their striped lunch on the open plain some hundred meters away, still close enough to see without binoculars. But with them we also see the lioness in the background- frustrated to have her prey hijacked.   

 

 

The children too love the place. Norbert snores almost as loudly as the hippos but Naomi sleeps for the first time- deeply throughout the night. Sara too, while an elephant is going bananas outside tent number 8 and the masais must chase him away.

We stay in tent number 7.

Our camp has only 9 «tents». Small houses build like masai manyattas, partially in local stone, canvas and hessian, a unique and eco-friendly constrauction and all with amazing views of the river beneath and the plains beyond.

After a day or two our bushbabies dont even want to go for game drives. Its enough to wake up and watch giraffes from bed before breakfast, play some cards while waiting for the hippos to go for a stroll on the riverbanks, greet the resident mongoose on our way to the the pool where we take a dip at the hottest time of the day, try to capture the colors of the pink and purple lizard on a drawing paper, walk down to the hippos with the masais in the afternoon and fall asleep under a masai chukka (blanket) on some chairs pulled together as Norbert and I draw our canvas chairs out under the roof of stars and drink a glass of something sweet..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As for our days, they are spent inspecting tents and mosquito nets, taking measures for canvas and cushions, writing contracts for staff and making stocklists and worklists and checklists for everything to be followed up when we are back in Nairobi.

                                               Cannot wait to take you here...

                                                                           Karibu Sana Amani Mara!