WATAMU

still at Kenyan coast here comes a strange town known as Watamu ,village essentially a Swahili (or Bajuni) fishing village that has grown into a small beach resort over the years.With traditional food coats, clean silent streets and beautiful clean beaches makes it another tourist spot. The village has several small supermarkets, grocers and the usual Kenyan style Dukas made from cooconut tress which makes the town more attractive
Traffic jam is always is always thing that you can't experience when you are in watamu



Tourist zone in watamu

Traditional fashion shows and dance in Watamu village

Malindi

malindi is small town situated about 120 km north of Mombasa,just little south of equator and tourism is a thriving business in malindi .Malindi really comes into its own when we are exhausted after working through out the year ,then it should be top of anyone list who visit kenyan coast

its fun to play football near the ocean waters ,list of things to do in malindi



from the distance you can see Vasco da Gamas Pillar, on the beach in the middle of Malinidi's long coastal front, is a monument to where Vasco da Gama first set foot in modern-day Kenya in 1498.
well after working hard through out the year this is the only place i will go to relax and celebrate my Christmas with my friends and family marine marine park

Luxury lies not in how much stuff we have but in how well it's made - and how highly we value it.

Great Newsweek article. Definitely worth a read.

 

http://www.newsweek.com/id/191499

Golf bags

It would appear that a lot of people who like Sandstorm also play golf, so we've built a couple of simple 'pencil' golf bags out of the same canvas, leather and brass as our other bags. They're far from super-technical and you're unlikely to see Tiger Woods playing with them on the PGA tour any time soon, but just like everything else we do they look great, feel great and they'll last forever. Once we've built up some stock we'll pop them up on the website.

Natural High in Edinburgh

On Wednesday night we co-hosted an event at the Merchant's Hall in Edinburgh with leading African safari specialists, Natural High: a great company and one we're looking forward to working with closely in future. (If my blogging lately hadn't been so lax I would have posted the details before rather than after the event...will do better next time.)

On the night Mark Houldsworth and Alex Edwards from Natural High gave a fascinating illustated talk on their experiences in Tanzania, while sculptor Mark Coreth gave what I understand was a superb demonstration of his craft. A lucky person also won a Sandstorm Kenya bag but I don't have their details just yet, must find out next week.


Mark Coreth, demonstrating.


Rosanna Osborne with Crispin Kennedy and James Foster. (Great smile Rosanna.)


Clare Kennedy with Sue Osborne from Africa Venture.


Heather and Julia Stephenson

Business is booming

We had a very good feature in an excellent Kenya supplement in the UK Daily Telegraph on Saturday (the bag shown is one of our most enduring styles, a Weekender in green canvas & leather). Click on the picture and you can read the page or alternatively you'll find the online equivalent here.

Inauguration celebration

Kenya was an especially great place to be yesterday as the nation gathered around their television screens to watch and to celebrate the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States. That Kenya was the birthplace of Obama's father is well known, but perhaps less well known (certainly outside Kenya) was that his father was a Luo, the same tribe as the vast majority of our skilled craftsmen and women, so they had even greater cause for celebration. Perhaps a few sore heads this morning!

More adventure

Yesterday I met up with the Adventure Family before they headed south on the final leg of their African adventure (they're aiming to be in Cape Town mid-January). It was good to see them and nice to see our Fishing Stool being used for more than fishing (or sitting).

Snake incursion

Yesterday's excitement involved a large(ish) snake that wandered into the Lenana shop as we prepared for our Christmas Sale. No idea if he was there to buy or just looking but Martha wasn't at all happy with the intrusion and he was quickly despatched.

Always ethical, now audited.

Today we had an independent ethical audit conducted by the extremely professional Nairobi-based Ethical Business Services team from Africa Now. Leonard Nawiri and Peris Ochieng will be pulling together the report over the next week but the initial feedback was very positive, which is gratifying but unsurprising because we've always been guided by strong ethical principles. I think the key is that it will give us a framework to guide us in future, undoubtedly helping us do a few things better, but most importantly formalising something that until now has been more of a philosophy that has grown from operating in a way that simply felt right.

Kinondo Kwetu

At the weekend I embarked on a mammoth trip from Nairobi to Mombasa by train: departure 7pm Friday night, scheduled arrival 8am Saturday morning, actual arrival 4pm Saturday afternoon. The travails of the journey were more than compensated for however by my visit as a (paying) guest, and deliverer of new product, to Sandstorm customer and resort (that feels more like a great house party) Kinondo Kwetu: I get a real kick when people make doing something so well seem so completely effortless. Tell all your nice friends, this place is heaven and it was a wrench to have to leave for the return rail journey after just 24 hours. My pics don't do it justice, so take a look at the website when you get a moment.

Nyama Choma

I've been rather tardy this week with posting, much going on, but last Friday we all gathered at the Africana Restaurant next to Jamhuri for nyama choma. Pretty much everyone made it and it was great to have everyone from the factory, the office and the shops together under one roof, and we're going to do it every couple of months from now on. For those of you unfamiliar with nyama choma, it is (or certainly feels like) Kenya's national dish, and translates literally as 'roasted meat' in Swahali, we had goat and on this occasion, accompanied by ugali (cooked maize meal) and sukuma-wiki (curly kale). Delicious.

Everyone gathered.

Big smiles from the sales team.

Zadock (left), our accountant, dispenses beer with natural authority.

Never get between Moshi and his nyama choma.

Lest we forget

There's a small turning off Ngong Road on the right hand side as you head into town. It's just past the racecourse and almost equidistant between our office at Lenana and Jamhuri. Thousands of people pass it every day by car and on foot, but I've never seen anyone make that turn. It brings you onto a long tree-lined avenue that leads to a cemetary and memorials that commemorate the fallen of the war in East Africa, 1940-41. This Sunday is Remembrance Sunday.





My Grandfather fought in the First War and, while we're remembering, this is the transcript of a letter sent to my Great Grandmother by one of his men. I never had the chance to know him, and this letter makes me wish I had.

June 19th, 1918
France

Dear Mrs. Stephenson,

I’m sure I don’t know whether this is the proper way to address you or not, and I hope you will pardon me the great liberty which I am taking in writing to you on behalf of the men of the battery and myself, which came out with the battery two years ago. The reason why I am writing is to ask you if you would mind letting me know if Capt Stephenson is recovering alright or if he has got better and been transferred to another battery as no one seems to know anything about him here. If he has been sent to another battery, would you mind sending me his address as I would like to ask him to get me transferred as well to be along with him. I have been his servant three years now and well I think there is no one like him, and if he gets another servant I’m sure he wont look after him properly. Also, I have to tell you that the men think him one of the best Officers out in France. He was practically in charge of two brigades of artillery and he never lost either a man, horse, gun or wagon all during the retirement, and how he managed to bear up through it all was really a marvel. If you could hear the men praising him your heart would well nigh burst with pride, and I am not telling you this simply because you are Capt. Stephenson’s mother but because its every bit true. He was the last old Battery Officer that we had left and that in itself makes us doubly anxious to have him back. I have watched the various roads into the camp waiting for him until I think I know every stone in them, but he never appears. No doubt you will think me very presumptious in writing to you like this, and I don’t know what the Captain would think if he knew, but hope that you will excuse me. Hoping that the Capt’s sister, brother and yourself are enjoying the very best of health.

I have the honour to be
Your obedient servant

G. J. Taylor. 750693.

Meet Joyce

Joyce Wairimu has just come on board as Sales & Marketing Manager. Previously as Head of Marketing and Procurement at KDF, Kenya's leading duty free operator, she was a Sandstorm customer and it's great that we've been able to lure her to our side of the fence. Originally from Nakuru, Joyce's passion away from work (apart from fine wine) is choral singing and she is going to be performing in Handel's Messiah (all four hours!) with the Nairobi Music Society on the 6th and 7th December at the Oshwal Auditorium in Westlands. If you're in town why not go along, I'm sure it will be amazing.

Station spotting

Matathia is an abandoned railway station high above the Rift Valley floor. I watched a very long goods train out of Nairobi wind its way through here, but the trains don't stop any more and the station was much more interesting. Loved the type on the signal box, and couldn't help wondering if they had spread it out to aid legibility as you flew through at speed, or just because it looked great. The 'derailer' looked interesting too: every ad agency should have one to stop ideas that get out of control.

 

 

The Camper of Bags

I like Camper as a business and as a brand, I like what they stand for but above all I love my Camper boots. They're incredibly comfortable, and the more I use them they better they get - just like our bags. In fact wanting to be the Camper of Bags wouldn't be a bad ambition. (My trusty Fishing Bag included entirely gratuitously in the background.)

What's in a name?

Last week we made a trip to the aptly named Industrial Area on the other side of Nairobi. Not the prettiest part of town, and a nightmare to get to, but the only place to get many essential materials and equipment: the only way to find new suppliers seems to be either through word of mouth or luck, Euro Patools was a discovery that fell into the latter category. The proprietor, Dipak, moved here from London 18 months ago and the business is going from strength to strength. Their name caught my eye and I wondered where it had come from; it transpired that his intention had been to call the business Europa Tools, however the City Council processed the paperwork with the space in the wrong place and so Euro Patools was born: not the name he had planned but distinctive, memorable and with an interesting story attached that elevates it from clerical error to happy accident.

Adventure Family

Lina, Richard, Pia and Milan and all their children together make up Adventure Family. They're doing what many of us can only dream of: driving all the way from Europe to Africa in a pair of fully kitted out Land Rovers. They stopped in to see us as they passed through Nairobi on their long journey south.



Having set out from Gothenburg in February, you can imagine that their seats had taken a bit of a hammering so Sandstorm Kenya joined an august group of sponsors that includes Pentax Cameras and Lenovo Computers, and supplied them with canvas & leather seat covers to make them more comfortable, along with some of our new canvas & webbing bags.

They'll be putting the seat covers and the bags through their paces, keeping us posted on how they perform and giving us feedback on potential improvements as they go (and of course saying very nice things about us to everyone they meet!).

You can follow their adventures on their blog.

Sparks fly

We had 25mm of rain last night. I was working late and wondered why someone was setting off fireworks outside until I realised that the rain was shorting out the power lines on the main road to lethal, but quite spectacular effect. 

Sunday with Robin and Nigel

On Sunday I was fortunate enough to be invited to join Robin Schalch and Nigel Pavitt on a small adventure, to look at some fascinating pieces of Kenyan history.

There's nothing I can write here in under a 1000 words that would do justice to what was a very enjoyable and educational day roving the Rift Valley and Escarpment outside Nairobi (and the weather was hopeless for photography!), but Nigel, helped by Robin and others, has just produced an astonishing book called Kenya – A Country in the Making 1880-1940. Containing 720 photographs it's an essential visual record of Kenya over those years.


Here are reviews of the book in The Nation, and the Wall Street Journal, and it's available to order it at both Amazon.co.uk, and Amazon.com. I know it will make a superb gift either for yourself or anyone else who loves this country and its history.