When we arrive back at Judy’s house a large group of women are waiting for us.  They’re beautifully adorned in their jewelry and headdresses and all of the women are wearing bright orange shukas. Omar puts a bottle of water in my hand as our entire group heads out to a local meeting hall – aRead More

A recent opinion article by Samuel Loewenberg in The New York Times (November 26, 2011) correctly observes that the current hunger crisis in the Horn of Africa, which has afflicted some 13 million people, was predicted for months. “The drought has been mounting for a year, but it wasn’t until the crisis peaked over theRead More

At dawn we drove out of the village toward the Chalbi Desert, a land of dry volcanic sand that stretches all the way to Ethiopia. Judy and Ali, as well as a couple of other village friends, all lifetime residents of Kargi, were interested in joining us on this expedition and so they joined Kura,Read More

BOMA was recently listed as one of “50 Nonprofits Making a World of Difference” on the Matador Network, a Website that publishes independent, original and in-depth reporting on the global travel culture. The report featured nonprofits around the world—including such well-known institutions as Grameen Foundation, MercyCorps and Global Fund for Women—that are successfully using cutting-edge,Read More

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 ofRead More

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 a settled village becauseRead More

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 descent down the other side of the mountain wasRead More

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 God) in Tanzania and Longonot, Menengai and Mount Kulal in Kenya. TheRead More

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 I could barely hearRead More

In the months prior to this trip to Kenya, I had spent a lot of time reading about the success of healthcare in Africa. While economic interventions, in general, have not been overly successful — incomes across the continent are down or stagnant — there have been successes in the delivery of healthcare due toRead More