Hello?
tap tap
Does this thing work?
Yes! Hi! Hello! I’m back! Two years later, I’ve made a reappearance.
I’ve missed this space.
Two years brings a lot of changes. For starters:
New baby
New house
New job
The baby’s name is Pax. Pax means peace. He’s now hardly a baby. Just turned one. A little stinker, that one. Somehow always knows how to give me a mischievous look to make me laugh and can say so much in his one main syllable: “na.”
The house is a game-changer. Well, not so much the house. It’s big. I like small cabin-y houses, although it does allow us to host lots of friends (You too, if you want). But the property is the real game-changer. 1.7 acres right outside Kampala. And so much greenery and trees. I have a vegetable garden. And we have a guest house. I do nature walks on my own property. That’s a rare thing to say in Kampala. I love it.
Oh, and the job. Well, it’s kind of an extension of the property. Not sure you’d call it a job or just something I tinker with. You see, this property has this beautiful, open room just above the guest house and I couldn’t find a childcare option for Leo that I liked, so I turned it into a preschool. So now I run a preschool. Didn’t see that coming. I thought it would be something simple - just a few other families. Turns out, we moved smack in the middle of a neighborhood with lots of foreigners with lots of kids. Turns out, they all couldn’t find what they wanted, either. So they all came. I don’t teach. Heavens, no. I’m not a saint. I just do the behind-the-scenes work to make it happen. I’m not even sure I would call it a school. It’s hard to explain. Best I can do is: It’s something like a Waldorf-inspired, play-based, nature-based, morning play group with incredible caregivers. I do think it’s pretty special, though.
So now that we have all of that out of the way, I’ll tell you the real reason I’ve reappeared:
We’re going on a family adventure and I want to use it as an excuse to re-start my blog. I’ve missed my blog.
Over the holiday season, we will drive around Kenya for a month, camping from the top of our car. There will be a lot of pictures of birds. Of that, I’m sure. So if that’s ultra nerdy to you, I do apologize. I hope I’ll have some pictures of some elephants, too. Hopefully lions. Maybe cheetahs or leopards. Maybe. Probably mostly a lot of bare baby butts, digging in the dirt.
Yes, we are camping all around Kenya with the kids. I know, maybe we’re insane, doing this with a 1-year old. It’s all just another dirt pile to him. We’ll see how it goes.
But with Pax in mind, we can’t drive much each day, so we are taking it slow and stopping every 2-4 hours for another night. I originally wanted to go to Lake Turkana in northern Kenya (because adventure!), but I was warned of the terrible roads (take 3 spare tires, they said), the extreme heat (over 100 every day, they said), and the potential security threats (always check with the locals, they said). So we decided that maybe we could save that adventure for when the boys grow up a bit and can appreciate the sacrifice of heat and terrible roads and a wee bit of danger. Let’s not make ourselves miserable this time around.
So I re-worked our itinerary. We’re hitting all the greatest places in Kenya and I. CAN’T. WAIT.
Here’s the plan:
Kampala to Jinja to Tororo to Iten to Lake Baringo to Aberdares to Ol Pejeta to Fourteen Falls to Tsavo East to Galana Conservancy to Watamu beach to Tsavo West to Amboseli to Nairobi to Suswa Conservancy to Maji Moto Maasai Camp to Maasai Mara to Kakamega Forest to Busia to Jinja to Kampala.
Ok here, look at this.
Kampala to Watamu
Watamu to Kampala
Eric would prefer to have a few places in mind, take off, and see what comes rather than planning it all out. I’ll admit, I like that idea too, although I do NOT love the idea of a 1-year old screaming his face off in the car for too long, so I wanted to be sure we had a place to stay all along the way.
We’ve been planning this gig for most of the year and now it’s just around the corner. We ordered the rooftop tent from South Africa, got ourselves a fridge, and Eric has been figuring out the electricity situation. We’ve made and re-made lists for packing, read lots of other blogs and advice. For us, this is no one-time adventure. We see all our purchases as an investment, mainly in each other. Kenya is the maiden voyage, but we hope to keep overlanding and camping throughout Africa as the boys grow older. This is our way of spending time together as a family, exploring and appreciating this incredible continent.
And now, the tent is on the Land Cruiser and the packing is almost finished. So now it’s nearly time. We leave Dec. 13.
