A Fundraising Trek for MEAK by Jane H.Furse.

 

One day Layla, a little girl in northern Kenya, will wonder how she got her name. Her mother can tell her that back in November 2012, a woman from very far away gave it to her while on a medical mission.

Beverly Orthwein, a board member of Medical and Educational Aid to Kenya (MEAK), brought Layla’s mother a pair of crutches donated by the local hospital in Greenwich, Conn., Beverly’s hometown. Layla’s mother had lost her leg and was getting around with the help of an old pipe topped with rags for padding.

As she tried out her new crutches, Layla’s grateful mother asked Beverly to name the baby. Beverly, who has three sons, chose the name reserved for the daughter she never had.

When people hear you’ve been to Africa, they want to know what animals you’ve seen, but for me this particular adventure is also about bearing witness to the kindness of strangers like Beverly and the volunteers who bring medical aid to the people like Layla’s mother. MEAK’s activities span all of Kenya, but this particular region, known as Samburuland, borders Ethiopia and Sudan and is largely ignored by the government and other non-governmental organizations.

Beverly is returning home after the mission, but Dee Belliere, who with her husband Mike, founded MEAK, remains behind with seven of us—Gerry Boyle, Mike Fels, Pascal Luse from the U.K., and Isabel Wilcox, Alexandria Skouras, Celeste Rault, and myself from the U.S. We arrive at the end of this medical mission to begin a fundraising trek we hope will benefit this mission as well as MEAK’s future endeavors.

The 70 mile journey will take us from the eye mission campsite outside the town of South Horr, through the Seren Valley and the Ndoto Mountains to end at the Milgis where the Parsaloi and Seiya Luggas come together.

Of course the animals and birds–the mysterious tracks testifying to the teaming life of this beautiful terrain–inspire the humbling awareness that out here, we are just more animals in the mix. For the next six days, we’ll make our own tracks south through the steep and rocky Ndikir Laurie pass and through dry riverbeds called luggas.

When they’re not filled with water, the luggas appear to be a sort of superhighway for the local herds and herders. Based on the number of animal prints visible in the soft sand, it also seems to be a fast lane for porcupines, hyenas, leopards, tiny deer called dik dik—and every sort of critter that cavorts or crawls.

Our guides, Helen Douglas-Dufresne and her partner, Peter Ilsley, are native-born Kenyans who have been taking groups through this part of the world for 25 years. Emma Hedges, owner of the Desert Rose Lodge, also accompanies us. Together the three of them know every bird, plant, animal track and burrow on the ground and every constellation in the sky, though Pete acknowledges that their Samburu team has a special expertise that comes only from a lifetime spent here.

On our first night at a campsite near South Horr, as the eye mission there draws to a close, dozens of Samburu elders and warriors come together to express their thanks through song and dance. The songs, passed down for generations, seem timeless and free of outside influence, and it is deeply moving to witness a performance so few outsiders have seen.

I know their gratitude is heartfelt and can’t help feeling it myself. We have watched the bandages come off the patients as they smile with delight at their first glimpse of loved ones. They look around in wonder at the world, seeing it clearly for perhaps the first time in their lives.

Despite heavy rains and tribal tensions between the Samburu and Turkana, in four days a medical team of three nurses, one anesthetist and one surgeon have restored sight to 214 people suffering from cataracts and other eye diseases.

The women can return to creating their intricate beadwork, and the men and children can go back to taking care of their livestock. Most of all, they don’t have to rely on a relative or anyone else to guide them.

In the eighteen years since the Bellieres started MEAK, more than seven thousand people—including many children suffering from congenital cataracts and other eye diseases—have been treated. All this has been done with virtually 100% of the contributions. MEAK has no paid employees or administrative overhead, and Dee and Mike donate their personal expenses, as well as their time and expertise.

As usual at the end of a mission, Dee sorts out plane rides to Nairobi for still more patients with conditions requiring treatment at a hospital. Meanwhile Mike is at home in Surrey, UK, planning the heart mission he’ll oversee in a few weeks.

Once we start our trek, we will be off the grid—no cellphone, Wi-fi, Internet. We will be “on safari,” but there are no jeeps, game preserves or posh lodges.

This is an area so seldom visited by tourists that some children have never seen a white person, which is why we can’t take it personally when one look at us makes them burst into tears.

Besides, others are delighted to see us. With our hiking boots and safari hats, we create an exotic and amusing diversion for the youngsters charged with watching the family herd of goats, sheep and cattle.

As they smile and greet us with a bemused “Jambo!” Pete confirms my theory: if you dropped us in the middle of the bush and an eight-year-old Samburu child in an even more remote location, the kid would be home before dark while we would be a few links down from our accustomed spot on the food chain.

The Samburu have an understanding of and relationship to nature I could not have imagined or even thought possible. I look at the side of a mountain and see the beautiful striated outcrop of rocks, the varying hues of green vegetation. The Samburu look at the same mountain and spot a tree useful for making a toothbrush, a plant that’s good for soothing a nettle or bug bite. They know every track and how fresh the animal dung is—and whether or not a prospective campsite is safe.

On my first trip here two years ago, I watched in amazed confusion as Lemongas, one of Helen’s trusted elders, had a “conversation” with a honeyguide. The small gray bird lingered long enough to convince me that, yes, he was listening to Lemongas’s whistles. When the bird seemed to fly off in a huff, Helen explained that Lemongas told the bird he didn’t have time to get to the hive the bird had found.

On this trip, however, the honeyguide gets his way. Lemongas gets another visit from a feathered friend, disappears with him into the bush, and emerges 20 minutes later with his share of the dripping honeycomb.

Although the terrain varies a lot over the course of the week—from flat, sandy luggas to steep mountain passes–there’s a kind of rhythm to each day. It begins about 5:30 in the morning, when one of the Samburu team awakens us with his singing and a “good morning.” He pours water in the little canvas washbasin perched outside each of our tents, and we have time to splash water on our faces and come together for delicious Kenyan coffee and biscuits before we hit the trail. We’ll have a huge breakfast about two hours into our hike, consisting of fantastic muesli, homemade bread, and eggs with bright yellow yokes that tell you how fresh they are.

When we arrive at a new campsite at the end of a day’s hike, we have lunch and grab a mat from one of several dozen camels carrying them and the rest of our gear. By early afternoon, it’s hot and most of us are tired. We park ourselves under a tree for a “kip” as Helen and Pete’s team set up the tents, build a fire, dig the loos and create beautiful showers with makeshift “curtains” from brush they’ve collected.

As the sun goes down, we take turns at the showers and, one by one, arrive at the campfire for tea, snacks and cocktails before dinner. This is my favorite time of day. We recall the day’s adventures and tell stories as we watch the sky, undiluted by ambient light, reveal the planets and stars in all their varied sizes, brightnesses and colors.

You can’t help but be awestruck, sitting in the midst of all this natural beauty. However, the subject matter around the campfire covers a wide variety of “philosophical” issues, including how to maximize the staying power of the bucket of water you get to shower under every night—and whether it’s advisable to walk to the loo if you have to go in the middle of the night.

One morning, just before dawn, Dee announces she hears hyenas—reason #182 not to go to the loo in the dark, I tell myself. Besides, it’s much easier to water the land behind the tents.

We never, however, resolve flashlight controversy.

“Do you turn it off or leave it on?” somebody wants to know.

“Turn it OFF! It attracts bugs!” Mike answers.

“Yeah, but then, well, you’re out there alone, in the dark in…a vulnerable position,” I point out.

Any and all topics one doesn’t talk about in polite company move to the top of the list—and all them reduce us to peels of laughter and a level of maturity that would embarrass a four-year-old.

Clearly we are the most wonderfully good-natured mzungu ever to walk through these parts. As far as I’m concerned, that theory gets confirmed the night it starts to rain and we run around laughing in the mud as we struggle to pull our tent flaps closed.

On the trail, if we stop laughing and talking long enough, we can hear the Samburu team singing to pass the time as they guide the camels. One sunny and hot day we stop to rest in the shade and join in the singing. Before you know it, we are dancing, too. In that moment we all get the rhythm of the song, and even the camels seem to get the beat.

Everyday I continue to enjoy the camaraderie but cherish as well my growing ability to read the surroundings and see how they change based on where we are and what is happening overhead. The rain has left a treasure trove of fragrant sage, blooming cadia, yellow cactus blossoms. From atop the acacia trees, the weavers, hornbills, starlings and shrikes return our gaze.  Some of us, myself included, have learned the hard way to duck well beneath the acacias’ savage thorns.

I am also learning to pay attention to the lay of the ground—not just where to walk but what animals have come before us and to admire the work of nature’s architects, including the termites who create giant nests that look like pueblos.

And who knew dung could be so exciting! Less than 50 yards from one of our camps we see fresh elephant spore. Helen can hardly contain her excitement. It’s the first time in decades the elephants have felt safe enough to come to this part of Samburuland. The Milgis Trust, created to preserve the wildlife and fight poaching, seems to be having an impact.

We promise to stay quiet and try as well to tread as silently as Lemongas, who takes the lead. Walking in silence connects us more to what surrounds us and rewards us with a view of seven or eight elephants on the mountainside across from ours.

From our vantage point, we can also see grey sheets of rain, miles away in the mountains, and when we arrive at our next campsite on the Lomolok lugga, the team know this one may not be dry for long.

Then it comes. A rush of water, the runoff from the mountain rains begins to fill the lugga. Sometimes they can fill so quickly that the force of the water can be deadly. This one, however, is a nice peaceful stream, a welcome sight for the animals, four-legged and otherwise.

As the lugga fills, it strikes me as an apt metaphor:  For centuries outsiders have traveled here from far away and wreaked havoc. But maybe one day the little girl named Layla will be able to say that MEAK and its supporters poured a trickle of hope into this place far off the beaten path.