We all piled into Gumps, the BOMA Land Cruiser. Omar has now assumed cooking responsibilities in the field and he had organized a lunch at Joseph’s camp, a group of small bandas built at the confluence of three rivers. I explained to my friend Sarah, who traveled north to see BOMA’s work, that this wasRead More
The Raw Beauty of This Land
In a few days, I’ll be leading a safari for St. Lawrence University. My friend Sarah, who will be joining the trip, arrived a few days early to visit Northern Kenya and see BOMA’s work. Sarah was a trouper. After a long flight from Chicago to London to Nairobi, she arrived at the hotelRead More
Measuring Success
The morning after I arrived in Nairobi I had a fascinating breakfast meeting with Marc Maxson of Global Giving. Marc is a PhD neuroscientist who helps coordinate the GlobalGiving Storytelling project in East Africa, a monitoring and evaluation experiment (see www.globalgiving.org/story-tools/ for details). The meeting with Marc was timely. BOMA has a program that is seeingRead More
Time for Some Good News From Africa
This summer’s news from Africa has been sobering. We want to bring you some good news – but first a bit of background. Since the founding of The BOMA Project in 2005, we have endured three severe droughts. Each resulted in devastating livestock mortality, and each was proclaimed “the worst drought in 50 years.” AsRead More
The Human Element of Our Work
It even rained in Loiyangalani. As we came into the desert oasis town the steam was rising from the evaporating puddles in the road. Kura pointed out the Turkana settlements on the outskirts of the village. We splashed through the overflow water from the borehole that provided plentiful water to the settlement; naked children wavedRead More
Where There Are Large Herds, There is Danger
In the morning I woke early, anxious to be back on the road and on our way to Loiyangalani. Poor Kura, Omar and Semeji had been up late, talking with Joseph. I hated to wake them up but Kura was great, as usual. “It’s okay, Mama Rungu, I agree, we should leave now.” “Okay, Kura,Read More
BOMA Business Mentors
Semeji, BOMA’s security man, provides a traditional blessing to begin the BOMA presentation of the Rural Entrepreneur Access Project (REAP) to the DFW group. After each intonation, the group is asked to hold their palms up and as they say “aawoom,” close their palms, and then re-open them for the next blessing. Holding my runguRead More
Crossing the Kaisut
By 4:15 a.m., Gumps is loaded and ready to go. We are headed back to the Samburu area where all of our Business Mentors will meet with the Dining for Women safari group. We will be collecting most of the Mentors along the way, though four that are on the main road will catch a lorry toRead More