Begging is the First Born

At Judy’s home in Kargi there is a stick hut with burlap walls. It has a dirt floor, a bed made of sticks and a thin foam mattress. This will be my room for the next two nights. We arrived in the middle of the day. I asked Omar to bring me a basin of water into which...

The Face of Food Aid

The town of Marsabit is on the Cape Town to Cairo road, a main artery of the African continent. Just two hours west of this main road is the village of Kargi, home to numerous clans of the Rendille people. Like many of the main villages in Northern Kenya, Kargi became...

The Ominous Falam

When we drove up the western side of Mount Kulal to reach the village of Gatab, our vehicle had to negotiate the steep sides of the mountain. Deep gashes in the dormant volcano’s lava flows created jaw-dropping canyons that made the ascent long and challenging. The...

The Verdant Forest of Mount Kulal

Millions of years ago the African continent tore itself apart, creating a jagged trench from Jordan in the north to Mozambique in the south. Great volcanic mountains erupted on either side of this giant crevice, including Kilimanjaro and Ol Donyo Lengai (Mountain of...

Under Siege

After a night of malarone-infused anxiety dreams, I awoke to the sound of young fruit dropping on my tin roof from the gnarled olive tree above my hut. The winds had arrived. As the dawn broke, the intensity of the wind increased, and by the time I was up and dressed...