Circle of Friends

A Singapore family that has set up a second home in remote Kenya shares their connection with the local communities with guests of their lodge.

- KAREN TEE

Fresh off a bone-rattling, 2.5-hour Land Cruiser drive along a dusty, rocky country road through northern Kenya's Laikipia county, there is just enough time for a quick lunch at our lodge before we pile back into the vehicle again. After all, there is a Samburu wedding to attend and the festivities have been well underway since the crack of dawn.

There are no invitations in this remote part of the world, which is inhabited by Kenya's Maasai and Samburu communities, who are known to be fiercely protective of their traditional way of life. Here, news is spread through the tribes through word of mouth. This is why, even though we are strangers to Kenya, as guests of safari lodge Ol Lentille, we too are cordially welcomed to join in the festivities.

I am visiting at the invitation of the owners - Singaporean Laura Yung and her husband Andre Cohen, a long-term resident of the little red dot - to experience the lodge's ethos of preserving a slice of rural Kenyan life that has been largely untouched by tourism and modern life.

There are no other safari lodges in this vicinity. The nearest hub is the central Kenyan town of Nanyuki, which is 2.5 hours away by land or 20 minutes on a chartered light aircraft.

Although the lodge is outfitted with high speed Internet, electricity, plumbing and hot running water, the use of technology appears to be fairly basic among the tribes: simple touchpad mobile phones and fires, mostly, to light their huts. There are single lightbulbs that run on electricity credits but these are only for essential activities like children having to do their homework after dark.'