Samburu Village at Archer's Post

I boarded a matatu on Thursday to go up to Archer's Post and visit a Samburu women's village there. While on the matatu, I saw an interesting slide of hand happen twice between two individuals, which I am pretty certain was a drug deal. Moments later, I found out that one of the individuals seated next to me who was involved in that transaction was a police officer. Sadly, I still believe it was a drug deal or some sort of shadiness.
It took about an hour over partially paved, partially unpaved road, but we ended up getting a flat tire along the way. Watching the men try to change this flat tire was a bit exhausting and I was tempted to intervene. My better sense of judgement told me that if men would take issue with that in the states, they most certainly would here, and I managed to refrain.
When we arrived in Archer's Post, Ambrose, a man who works for the women's village, came to get me and bring me back to camp. As we walked past the village, the women were standing at the entrance to greet me. The woman in charge came out and introduced herself as Rose, and welcomed me before I headed to camp to get settled. She was well decorated with colorful fabric and beads. One of her necklaces was about the circumference of an old record, and just as thick with beads minus, of course, the space for her neck.
I walked on to camp and settled into a banda overlooking the river. On the other side of the river, was Samburu National Park, where I saw men herding their cattle to drink from the river. The little banda was quaint with bed, mosquito net, desk, toilet and shower. When I say shower, I mean small metal pipe that dumps cold water out like a hose. Of course, the other day, I bathed with a bucket, so I could be going places! lol!
The camp had two bandas, a covered area for eating, and a few tables for guests to sit and look over the river. It was breathtaking. I was the only guest and it was completely peaceful. The river was flowing, there was vast open reserve as far as the eye could see, and in the distance, it was all framed with beautiful mountains. This was the Kenya I was looking for.
I was offered a cold Tusker and gladly accepted my 1 degree colder than room temperature beverage. For lunch, Ambrose made spaghetti, skumawiki (sp?), and goat meat, I think. After lunch, Rose came to meet me at the camp and told me we would wait until 4pm to see the camp when it wasn't so hot. She sat with me a while, and when I went to ask her questions about the camp she informed me she would tell me all about it when we went there. This created a little awkward silence at the table, but I've found that they just seemed to not want to leave me alone. Like they were looking after me and trying to keep me company because I was by myself. It was sweet, but kind of funny.
She eventually left and I went and stood right next to the river for a moment. Benedict, a 17 year old boy working there, spotted me and alerted me that there are crocodiles. My first thought was "oh shit!", but of course, I was not going to run away. I stood there for another moment, carefully eyeing the water, and then turned and walked away slowly, seeming to be unfazed by his comment. lol!
When 4 o'clock came, I heard singing in the distance. As I looked over, there were about 15 women who came to collect me. They were in a myriad of bright colors with intricate beadwork and decoration. They were singing and clapping and one at a time came dancing up to me and said something in their mother tongue, then danced back to the group. Rose instructed that we should leave now, and I followed the group as they sang and danced all the way back to the village.
Once at the village, they performed a few more songs for me and I was told I could photograph. After the songs, I got taken around the village where I saw the different buildings they had. There were homes built with sticks, dirt, water and cow dung. They were quite a bit larger than the Masai huts I had seen & you could see inside them, which was nice. There was a seperate room for the children to sleep, a room for the adults and a communal/kitchen area which also doubled as the room for the 15 year old boys to recover in after being circumsized.
They had a school built with concrete where many of the children from surrounding villages come to learn. They line up by rows of rocks and sing songs every morning before school starts. When peeking inside the classroom, I was greeted by a group of children hanging out, who were more than happy to recite the alphabet in English for me. Afterwards, they proceeded to sing a few songs, one of which, I had learned most of in Kiswahili and joined them.
I got a tour of the museum they had built, which was basically a small room with some artifacts from their past. There was some jewelry, some tools and some decorations. It was pretty neat to see. Three different organizations, including one from the states had donated the money to create the museum.
I learned that the village was started in 1990 by 15 women who were badly abused by their husbands. The women left and started their own village, deciding they would support themselves by selling beaded jewelry to tourists. They faced a lot of adversity at first. The husbands were coming to the village threatening to kill them. Other men set up stands near their village trying to deter tourists from shopping at the women's camp. Even today, many of the tour buses will not stop at their village.
The original 15 are no longer around, but it has continued to be a safe-haven for women facing abuse issues. They are currently 60 strong, and unlike many Samburus, they do not practice female genital mutiliation. In fact, they go around educating other Samburu villages on the negative impacts of FGM and give women's empowerment speeches around the world.
After touring the village, and coming to their little market, I was sure to shop and support such a courageous and politically active group of women. Their jewelry was beautiful, and even though I was in awe over some of the larger pieces, I couldn't bring myself to purchase something that I would never wear and end up setting in a box somewhere. :( I got a couple of bracelets, which I probably didn't bargain too well for, and headed back to camp for dinner.
Dinner was skumawiki (like kale), chipati (like naan), and goat (I think). I stuck mostly to the vegetarian side of things, as I find the meat here a bit too chewy and grissly to bear. After dinner, I played a Kenyan card game I learned called Flowers (which is what they call clubs). A couple other guys came and joined us, and before you knew it we had a couple of spectators. I didn't do too bad if I may say so myself. ;)
After several rounds of games, I went to sleep in my banda, where I was warned not to open the door for anyone. I was also told not to walk around or go near the water, which kind of creeped me out right before bed, but two of the guys were sleeping there, so that gave me a bit of relief. Next morning woke up bright and early and headed for the matatu at 7am.
Once in Isiolo, I packed up the rest of my things, had some toast with Katie, and caught a matatu to Nairobi. Back to the Wildebeest Camp.