Rolf Potts

At the height of the Covid pandemic a few years ago, when Kiki and I were dreaming of travel to Kenya, we became fixated with the Lets Drift Instagram account, which depicted the hiking adventures of young Kenyans in the gorgeous landscapes of their own country. For me, the appeal of the Let’s Drift narratives…

One cool thing about traveling through Kenya last summer was the number of fellow-travelers we met who were visiting from other parts of Africa. We met Kevine Kagirimpundu of Rwanda and B’Nor Mackey, originally from Ghana, at Nairobi’s Karen Blixen Museum. Kiki and I were curious about the place because of the 1985 Meryl Streep…

One intriguing aspect of traveling through the desertlike landscape near north Kenya’s Ndoto Mountains was the opportunity it provided us to meet fellow travelers. The travelers in this case there were not Western tourists, but young Rendille “warriors” (tribesmen who’ve been circumcised, but are not yet married) who live traditional nomadic lives in the northern…

“Staged authenticity” is a term coined by anthropologists to describe how, within the tourist economy, indigenous people perform a version of their culture that caters to the expectations of tradition-obsessed outsiders. My visit to northern Kenya this summer reminded me how complex and savvy displays of indigenous traditions can be — often mixing ancient cultural…