Kenya: The Pride of Africa

Hello lovely Pinchers!

This week, we’re coming from the far away arid lands of Kenya, where on March 23rd, we celebrated and brought awareness to World Water Day.

Water embodies life. While it may be easy for this stark fact to slip our minds in our day to day lives, in Kenya, this truth bears even more weight. It is here in Kenya, in its northern Lake Turkana, where osteologists (a fancy name for people who study human and animal bones from archaeology digs) discovered that all of mankind originated at this water source. Almost four million years ago, this lake was vaster, with a greater area of surrounding greenery to support human life. It’s ironic how we all were birthed from this water in a land that now experiences such dryness. Today, the temperatures are nearly one hundred degrees everyday, and because of global warming, the people say that the rains are coming later and later than their normal season.

In Kenya, there are 42 tribes spanning the large width of the country and each contributing to the country's diverse and rich culture and heritage. To the northern part of Kenya, we visited the Samburu tribe, who are the cousins of the Masai tribe and a subset of the Turkana tribe. The women wear magnificently colorful beads to symbolize a variety of traits, like marriage and age. Their heads are closely shaved from such an early age that when I visited, the girls were so entranced with my hair. For them, they only know hair to be a trait of the men who dye theirs a rusted red color just prior to marriage.

In the Samburu village, it is the women and girls who must travel two kilometers everyday to the closest water well. For them though, this distance is minuscule compared to the six kilometers they previously had to trek prior to the installation of this water well. Water shapes how this tribe leads their lives, from how the rains affect their cattle and sheep to how the daily schedule of the women are centered around fetching water.

Seeing this, placed a lot into perspective- like our tendency to overworry, to overanalyze, to stress. We lose sight of all of our blessings, including our access to our life source- water. When I asked our translator if I may give one of the Samburu women to wear a Pinch lipstick for a picture, he chuckled and responded that she would not know what to do with it.

Even with the extremely minimalist and hard life that the Samburu people lead, they still maintain a level of happiness and respectfulness that was so inspiring. We could learn from the Samburu tribe, that with our water, our breath, our nourishment, and our loved ones, we are as complete as can be.

Let us know what sparks your gratitude!

With love, Linda