You Go Sister!

Did you know that all the ants we see are females? Not only that, they are sisters!!

Would you like to be courted by someone who first offers you a delicious gourmet meal, then an extravagant wedding and THEN a beautiful home in which to raise a family? Then go find yourself a dung beetle!

How about standing above a termite mound and knowing that more than 2/3 of it is below ground and that down there, termites have air conditioning and water reservoirs?

Or... how about that wasp that hunts a spider and paralyses it. Then it digs a hole and puts the alive but immobile spider into it. Then it lays its eggs on top of the spider and then - beware oh the squimish - the wasp larvae hatch and - well - EAT the alive but paralysed spider bit by bit until it dies...

Alfred Hitchcock and Dario Argento must have been entomologists!

Our bug walks with Dino Martins this past weekend at the Suyian Yoga on Safari and Lifeshop Discovery Retreat were absolutely fascinating. Add to that a most heart racing display of elephant mating, observed from our lunch table under the Acacia tree and a leopard rasping just beside our spot for yoga on the rocks and yoga under a rainbow and we all must say that the recent weekend in Laikipia was a perfect combination of serenity, excitement and, good fun.

Yoga on Safari in a desert island paradise

Kiwayu Island sits before me as I madly race from my sunbed to my "banda" where I quickly throw both feet into an enormous, REAL, oyster shell filled with deliciously cool water. HOW can sand get so hot! This is the hottest time of year at Kiwayu and our yoga sessions in the morning and evening turned into "Hot Yoga" whether we meant them to or not!

Yoga on Kiwayu is the way to go. We took over one of the bandas where we could do inversions against the sisal matting on the walls and gaze out at sunsets over the Indian Ocean. We did yoga trance dance in a lone banda way down the beach and then had sundowners there. We did walking meditation on a wild beach as very surfable waves rolled in and we meditated on a platform underneath a giant Baobab tree. And that was just the yoga! Kiwayu is the desert island paradise that you are imagining and doing yoga there makes it all feel like a journey to another planet indeed.

A Retreat at Suyian, Special Suyian

            Anne Powys has grown up playing on the massive boulders of her family farm. She knows every piece of rock and every blade of grass and has become one Kenya’s top botanists.

Her new, four “banda” ecological lodge, Suyian, is Anne’s way of sharing her passion for Laikipia and for every indigenous plant in Laikipia with others. Suyian means Wild Dog in Maa, the language of the Maasai and Samburu. It is not uncommon to see the dogs hunting along the ridge, screaming past in a pack; the most efficient hunting animal in Africa and coming back now from the brink of extinction in Laikipia.

Many lodges and camps in Kenya call themselves “eco” – a great buzz term for marketers. When you see Suyian, the meaning takes on another form. Just as there is not a single plant on the ranch that is not indigenous to Laikipia, there is not a single element of construction at Suyian that does not come from the ranch. The “bandas” are private, thatch cottages open on three sides looking out over a natural salt deposit that draws in impala, zebra (both Burchell’s and Grevy’s), leopard, dik dik, hyena, lion and elephant. They are built of twisted olive wood and river stones. Bathrooms are adjacent to the rooms, outdoors in an enclosed area with a separate loo and shower. Loos and showers are in the true safari tradition: a long-drop loo with wooden seat and safari bucket showers filled with perfectly hot water and hoisted overhead by the staff. After a day in the bush, a shower in the twilight is heavenly.

I discovered Suyian after some friends suggested Anne and I meet. I flew myself in, with my little terrier-dachshund, Flora, and spent the night with Anne. I behaved slightly neurotically during our first encounter owing to Flora constantly running off in pursuit of interesting sounds and smells. I anxiously interrupted our conversation by yelling “Floooorrrraaaa!” while visions of a leopard having a delicious terrier snack danced in my head. When I continued on to my friend, Shelan’s, house in Timau the next day, I could not stop raving about this amazing new place I’d found.

            Yes, I was on a high from the flying as I always am. And yes, I was on a high from the fact that Flora had survived the night in the wilds of Laikipia. But it was more than that. It was Suyian. It was special.

            Thus the idea for a weekend retreat of yoga by me, a workshop about life by Shelan and guided botanical walks by Anne was born. It happened last weekend - and it was amazing.

 

            Friday, January 15th was the day Kenya experienced the partial eclipse. I flew myself and a friend coming on the weekend from Lake Naivasha to Nanyuki in the morning. As we took off the light was dim and the air was still and serene. While flying over the top of the Aberdare Mountains, I detoured to see the stunning waterfalls that plummet into the gully. We landed in Nanyuki to collect Shelan with enough time for a cappuccino and a bit of breakfast at Barney's, the airstrip café. The three of us then piled into the plane and prepared to fly on to Suyian. 

            In Kenya, pilots often say, "Time to spare? Go by air!" This certainly was the case on Friday. As I did my pre-flight power checks, I noticed a problem and had the owner of the charter company have a look. He got his mechanics on to the problem immediately, reassuring me that it seemed something small and I should be in the air in about an hour. Alas, I should have known that with aeroplanes dating back to the 1960s that hour is often two or three -- or four or five. Missing the first yoga class in a three-day event is not the end of the world, unless of course you are the one LEADING that yoga class! After endless back and forth-ing about the plane ready, not ready, ready, not ready, I reluctantly tucked my plane to bed and jumped in a friend’s car. We rolled into Suyian just in time to see the others strolling back from an evening bush walk. We all joined together for sunset yoga. As we concluded our practice with meditation in the fading light of the Equatorial sun, it felt we were honouring the day of the eclipse.

            After our showers, as we sat around the roaring campfire under a blanket of stars that literally stopped you in your tracks. I knew that the weekend was going to be very special.

The sound of trumpeting elephants echoed throughout camp that night and upon opening my eyes the next morning, I saw a family of elephants browsing through the trees just beyond camp with the peaks of Mt. Kenya making a resplendent backdrop. Ahhhh. A big exhale as I sunk deeper into the peaceful energy of Suyian.

            It’s slightly a misnomer to call what Anne does a bush “walk” for we really amble along so slowly that we only get a few hundred meters from camp. You can see her mind working as she passes a nondescript little bush and then gives in and decides to talk about this one too: “That’s ipomea spatulata, it’s great for pregnant women suffering from spotting. A Samburu man I know gave it to his wife because the doctor was a day’s walk away. Her bleeding stopped and the baby was fine.” Anne could easily talk about every plant we pass but she makes an effort to go gentle on us. Euphorbia heterospina (toxic but in the exactly perfect amount great for chest congestion and cough); Acacia brevispica (favourite of the elies all the time); Acacia melifora (favourite for elies when they have a tummy ache or need help digesting). She repeats the Latin a million times if necessary, explaining the most interesting indigenous uses for the plants and engaging everyone in the fun of tasting and smelling.

On that Saturday morning’s bush amble we collected wild lettuce for a salad, saw natural eye drops ooze out of a plant, tasted bitter and sweet, examined tiny ants at work by looking through our binoculars backwards and generally had loads of fun. … Needless to say, it’s now impossible to simply ‘go for a walk’ in the bush!

            After a delicious breakfast featuring an array of delicious tropical fruit, homemade granola with yogurt or camel’s milk and the “full-English” for some,  we sat down for Shelan’s Lifeshop Discovery.

            Let me begin by saying that what Shelan does is not woo woo foo foo in any way. This is not therapy. It is not cultish. It is not linked to needing to sign up for more – although you can work with her individually if you wish. This is not a self-help movement that borders on a “you’re with us or you’re against us” mentality. This is real stuff about real, every day life. I think I speak for everyone in saying that there was nothing threatening or scary about it, no pressure to bare the soul. What we did do is explore the areas of doing and being in our daily lives, carving out ways to have a bit more time for ourselves, to finally tackle that desire to play the guitar or let go of the guilt or just be more present to ourselves when we are doing

 something nice for ourselves. We even got to eat chocolate! Three times! The time flew by and before we knew it were having lunch under a big shady tree feeling very good indeed and ready to create positive things in our lives more and more.

The yoga session that afternoon was a blast. We chanted, meditated, did sun salutations, flowed from pose to pose, let go into balancing and even did some yoga trance dance to great music with lots of drumming. The Samburu tribesmen in camp were quite impressed with our rhythm it turns out.

Some elephant came browsing through camp just as we were having dinner under the stars. I saw the conflict in Anne as she worried for her trees. “I don’t want them to knock the new ones down!” If forced to choose, I’d say elephant are probably my favourite African animal. I could see that it wasn’t so for Anne. Elephants tend not to grow out of the toddler stage and if they want to munch on a leaf, it’s just as easy to knock the whole tree down as to reach to the top. As long as elies have enough room to roam freely – and that means thousands of acres mind you – then there is a balance of elie damage in nature. If these toddler-minded powerhouses are forced to limit their range then the damage can be devastating. Yet another reason to be grateful for the Laikipia Wildlife Forum and the private ranches who are extremely dedicated to conservation in this area.

That night I felt that Anne had scared off every animal in the vicinity, as I didn’t hear a single sound. Shelan informed me otherwise in the morning: “There were hyena and elephant trumpeting everywhere! I could hardly sleep.” Seems I’d just had too good of a sleep after our wonderful day.

We did a beautiful game drive on the roofs of Land Rovers that Sunday morning to park below a massive outcrop of boulders. We walked to the top for our yoga class overlooking the entire Laikipia plateau. Two Verreaux Eagles and a family of hyrax watched us from the rocks. I found it hard to balance perched up there on the rocks and enjoyed that vulnerable sensation. It’s so nice not to be the all-powerful human race all the time!

It was clear that we were all energized by our weekend as we had breakfast on the rocks in the shade and chatted away happily. We were all on top of the world, literally and figuratively.

Anne then took us to a cave with some prehistoric art. As usual, archeology boggles my mind. This cave had been home to prehistoric man. Bodies had been found, excavations done. Then members of nomadic Nilotic tribes had used it. Now they still use it - as do the porcupine.

We had our wild lettuces, fresh foccaccia, salads and cheese for lunch before we all reluctantly jumped into cars and went our separate ways back to Nanyuki, Nairobi, Gil Gil and Naivasha. We all vowed to come back soon. I know we will. Suyian is now forever in our hearts.

 

 

Please write to nella@yogaonsafari.com if you’d like to know more about Yoga on Safari at Suyian.