Basic HTML Version
W
INTER
2012
.
S
T
. L
AWRENCE
U
NIVERSITY
M
AGAZINE
15
Inside a maasai boma, or livestock enclosure, Kathleen Perkins
Colson ’79 greets a villager. Colson operates The BOMA Proj-
ect, explaining that “boma” also means “to fortify” and “a safe
and protected place” and that she so named her fund because
“it reflects the pastoralist-culture communities that we work
with in northern Kenya [in] our commitment to an economic
self-empowerment program run by local people.”
Karen Wachtmeister
Joe Braz
[In Nairobi] we pass a man herding a flock of sheep on a busy road.
Women on the side of the road sell roasted corn, work alongside men
doing road construction, and carry heavy burdens, balancing the loads
on their backs with [tumplines] across their foreheads.
To know we are educating [students on our Kenya program] who will
have had experience working with children with AIDS before they con-
sider med school is uplifting.
Many areas grow vegetables and flowers, some owned by smaller
Kenyan farmers and some by larger, foreign companies [such as
DelMonte]. These products are flown to Europe, arriving fresh the next
day. It made me wonder about the need for food in neighboring Soma-
lia, and the starving images we see on TV. Does any wind up there?
Evening, Maasai Mara: I am sitting on the porch of my tent at the
far end of camp, looking down a ravine listening to the sounds of the
Serengeti. I can hear the bells of cows or goats being herded and the
grunts and special whistles used by the shepherd to herd them. It is as
if we have stepped back in time.
—Meredith Horton Braz ’77