Lamu Painter’s Festival 2011

Artists at work outside in the elements are often – correctly – labeled “street artists”, and pass their time sketching kitsch for tourists in big cities. But nothing could be farther from how Herbert Menzer, a wild and wacky German visionary/ real estate developer/accidental politician/friend to all, envisioned the first annual Lamu Painters Festival. Menzer’s […]

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Monet’s Equatorial Hanging Garden

Tarzan was never keen on celebrating Xmas, Thxgiving, Easter (huh?), birthdays, etc., so. If I weren’t having lunch with a friend at the Norfolk hotel that day, I’d have never remembered “Turkey day”.  The  formal dining room was empty when smiling hotel staff wearing tall white chef hats served up the perfunctory holiday fare. I […]

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Eid al Hajj celebration in Lamu, Kenya

Seems only fitting that an ancient Muslim tradition was celebrated today with  a race between ancient Arab fishing dhows. This part of Eid is less about fasting (Ramadan,  a word that reminds me of Papadam) than it is about the journey to Mecca in November. Who goes to Mecca anyway? A successful, middle-aged acquaintance, Hamid, […]

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Maasai smuggling my dogs from Tanzania through Namanga border to Nairobi

I have two aging yellow Labs, the off-spring of Zoe, the Lab I brought to Tanzania from Montana in ’94.  Katy and Ginger grew up in a pack with Zoe, of course, and later, Joe, the Ridgeback, and a male ridgeless Ridgeback/Lab mix with a ridge. Technically a “back”. His name was Fred, but Fred […]

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Lamu versus Nairobi

Oppressive gray blanket of cloud finally lifted and with it my spirits.  Most days are now sunny and cheerful. This weekend took long walk along Mbagathi ridge, past Kazuri beads, w C  and the dogs – a happy, panting black Lab and Ginger, a small terrier. The kind friends I stay with are Danish and […]

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