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A few weeks ago, my mom celebrated a very special birthday. My sister was cool enough to organize a surprise dinner party for her involving all of my mom's side of the family and all of us kids.. from a few hundred miles away (my parents currently live in California).
I think we got her pretty good :)
Happy birthday, Mom. I love you!
We spent a few days here and there in Nairobi, or passing through, on our way to the different childrens' homes. I came to love the drive, watching the busy street markets, colorful fruit sellers, and gorgeous landscape fly by my window. While in Nairobi, we had the chance to visit both the Giraffe Center and the Elephant Orphanage - fun chances to check out some wildlife in the middle of the city.
Back "home" in Naivasha, we spent an afternoon biking and hiking through Hell's Gate Park - so incredible! I had a moment where I realized that I had just biked through a herd of zebras - so very surreal. A lot of the terrain reminded me of a slightly more humid Moab area - lots of great red rocks and dramatic formations.
Oh, yes way!
We biked a few miles to a trailhead, where we stashed our bikes and hired a Maasai guide to help us hike through the winding canyons by the river. For most of the hike we didn't follow a trail, we just trusted our sweet guide Zacharias. It definitely could have been easy to get turned around in the canyons.
Yep, we just followed him down. 
I call this one "The Watchers". Hehe. Maasai herders checking us out.
I bought a bracelet from this awesome lady, and in return, she let me take her picture, and then asked if I voted for Obama.
Although we were hot and sweaty and didn't bring quite enough food, we had so much fun hiking that we were a little late getting back up to the trailhead. The park closes at sunset, and the sun was verrry low when we started to bike back - we were still I think six miles or so from the entrance. We made it about a mile, when Peris, the other director of Friends Vision, motioned for us to stop.
"There's a big herd of buffalo crossing the road up there," she explained. "As long as we keep very close together with the small ones in the middle, they should think we're a herd, too, and then they won't stampede." Oh, good. We breathed a collective sigh of relief when we made it through the herd, but a few hundred yards later, Peris stopped us again. A ways ahead of us, just off the road, there was a lone buffalo staring at us. We all kind of thought, hey, this is just one guy and we just biked past a whole herd! but she explained that a single male buffalo is much more dangerous and likely to charge than a herd, and when you're talking about giant buffalos with someone who grew up on Mt. Kenya, you listen.
"He looks angry," she said. "I think maybe you guys should be more careful."
It wasn't wise to go any farther down the road, so we sat there, waiting and hoping the buffalo would stand down, as the sun fell lower in the sky. Peris tried to make some calls to get someone to come pick us up, but her cell didn't have reception. We ended up biking back to the trailhead because we knew there was a ranger station there. Jannah hitched a ride back to her car, which was parked outside the park entrance, and thankfully the rangers let her back in to pick us up, because by then it was after dark and the park was technically closed. And thus ends the saga of the standoff with the buffalo.
Trying to wait the big guy out... or wear him down with stares.
When we got back to the volunteer house, we looked up some stats. The Cape Buffalo has an "unpredictable nature which makes it highly dangerous to humans". They can reach 11 feet long and weigh up to 2,000 pounds, and their horns are fused to their skulls, which frequently can't be pierced by a rifle shot. It's called "The Black Death" and "The Widowmaker" because it gores over 200 people each year. Neat! Thanks, Wikipedia.
I dunno, he looks friendly to me.
The steam is caused by hot springs! 
That same week, we headed over to the AIDS clinic, which is in a pretty poor part of Naivasha. While we were there, we were able to drop off another donated laptop (seriously, all you donaters are rad!) for the office to use, and we took some photos of the clinic and the staff for their website. We also met like a thousand very enthusiastic children who lived in the neighborhoods nearby - once word got out that there were a bunch of strange white people hanging out at the clinic, everyone had to come see for themselves :) One of the many awesome thing about this clinic is that they offer free AIDS testing, free condoms, and free tuberculosis testing. One step forward.
Dancing in the doorway.
Little did we know, we happened to end up at the AIDS clinic on World AIDS day. Chills.
We spent a sunny afternoon and warm evening at the girls' home, about a three hour drive from our home base in Naivasha. Friends Vision sponsors many of the girls there, and it was so fun to get to know some of the kids who have had long-standing relationships with Jannah and Peris. Many girls were a bit older than the kids at the safe house, and they got a kick out of hamming it up for the cameras - singing songs together, dancing, showing off, and just generally being goofy. The girls' home is on the edge of a gorgeous, lush valley, and we got there just at the start of the golden hour when the light is absolutely perfect.Since these girls are a bit older, they had much more experience with English, and it was SO FUN to talk with them and get to know them. We talked about favorite foods, favorite colors, and life in the States. My absolute favorite part was asking what they wanted to be when they grew up, and these lovely young ladies have some serious plans for the future. Doctor. Lawyer. Accountant. Pilot. Singer. And no part of me doubts that they can do it.
Many girls needed updated photos for Friends Vision's sponsorship program - instead of your standard basic snapshots, we giggled with these girls through portrait mini-sessions in the late-afternoon sunshine. As with the kids at the safe house, many of the girls were quite perplexed by my light blonde hair, wanting to braid it and stroke it. One girl looked at me questioningly, and said, "Um, your hair is very...bright!" A perfect description :)
On the drive to the girls' home.
Check out this glorious light!
Serious model face.
Africa's Next Top Model: Kenya edition :)
All this modeling is hard work sometimes.
A little behind the scenes action:
We were able to leave another donated camera and laptop, complete with office software and educational programs. Here, the girls are trying out Rosetta Stone:
If you're interested in sponsoring one of these amazing kiddos (and please do!) you can connect with Friends Vision here.
Although I returned from Africa several months ago, I have had THE hardest time figuring out how to update you all, and what to possibly say - the first, most logical problem being the sheer number of images to sort through. It's rare for me to have my camera attached to my hand for almost a month straight. After shooting a wedding, I usually end up with a few thousand images - and that's just from one day of shooting. Yikes. The second and larger problem is that Kenya, and all of the lovely people I met while I was there, have come to mean so much to me, and it's something that I'm having a hard time expressing. I'm sure you expect to hear that this trip was life-changing, and, well, it was - but that's so cliche and doesn't come anywhere near expressing what I felt and experienced while I was there. If you haven't yet checked out the video I put together, click here.I was talking with Jannah, the director of Friends Vision, as we were driving through Naivasha, where Friends Vision is based. Naivasha's in the heart of the Rift Valley, also called the "Cradle of Life"; it's where "Lucy", one of the earliest human ancestors, was found. Traffic regularly slows down for herds of zebras, and giraffes awkwardly, casually, munch on the acacia trees by the power lines on the side of the highway.
"There are so many people who come here for the first time, and say that they have a strange sense of finally coming home." Jannah said. And it was true - Naivasha is so beautiful, and teeming with life and color, and although I had no direct history with the place, I felt oddly familiar and comfortable as we drove down Longonot Pass and dropped into the valley. I felt a strange sense of belonging, like Africa was already a part of me. I wondered if there was any way this could be an ancient, ancestral, hardwired part of my DNA. Being there feels like being present for the beginning of time, in the best possible way.
The Great Rift Valley:
Lake Naivasha.
The view of Lake Naivasha from our "home":
Naivasha was our "home base" and where we spent much of our time. It's a small, bustling, rainbow-colored town, and I adore it. We spent a lot of time with the sweet kiddos at a safe house - a center for kids who are dealing with custody issues, or who are removed from their homes for their safety, or who simply get lost and have trouble finding their way home. The kids stay there for anywhere from a few days to a few months until their issues are dealt with in one way or another, and most of them are on the younger side. For their privacy, we won't be posting any images of their faces online - but trust me, they are all absolutely precious, wonderful, beautiful kids. We brought a few of our donated digital cameras, and taught the kids some basic photography lessons. They paid such close attention, and the detailed questions they asked about cameras and photography made me realize they were really getting it as the weeks went on. It made my heart swell to watch photography "click" for some of them (no pun intended) - at first, they would all just stand in a line, grab the camera when it was their turn, stand in the same spot at the front of the line, snap a photo of anything in front of them, then hand the camera to the next kid in line. Towards the end of the week, we worked out a system where each kid would get the camera for a few minutes, and would run around the grounds, carefully taking photos of their favorite things, posing for each other, setting up scenes with stuffed animals, and noticing details around them. Yay!
Waiting patiently in line to use the cameras:
The team sorting some of the donations we brought with us - clothes, accessories, and toys galore!
Many of the clothes and toys that were donated went to the kids at the Safe House. As portrait photographers, we thought it would be fun to play dress-up with a few of the girls and take some portraits. We ran this by the director of the Safe House, and she and the kids took it a step further and came up with an even better idea. Everyone - the boys and the girls - got dressed up in new outfits, and the girls all had their nails and makeup done by the staff at the Safe House. We dragged the school chairs out into the courtyard, and put on a fashion show! The boys walked down the runway one by one as the girls giggled and screamed and clapped. Then the girls went one by one, strutting down the runway and striking poses for us, the "paparazzi". Then we shot quick portraits of each child, all dressed up for the camera, then we all had a giant jumprope and dance party. Literally one of the best, happiest days of my life. A few days later, we were able to have the pictures printed at a shop in town, and we brought prints back to the Safe House so each kid could have a copy of their portrait! We were able to leave the Safe House with several donated cameras and a laptop, stocked with office software and educational programs like Rosetta Stone in several languages.
Judy, the wonderful director, checking out the prints:
To those of you who donated clothes, toys, or cameras - THANK YOU. More to come soon!
I'm still working on a huge blog post (or several) with tons of stills, but here's a little video I made during my trip to Kenya with Friends Vision this fall. I absolutely fell in love with Africa and everyone I met, and I can't wait to go back, hopefully sooner rather than later :)
[vimeo 58228795 w=500 h=281]
Photographers' Vision for Africa - Kenya 2012 from Cedar House Cinema on Vimeo.
