Into the Heart of Kenya
An immersive journey of culture, contribution & adventure.
The dance program on this trip runs in partnership with Dance Alchemy®.
This isn’t a trip you watch from a bus window.
I’ve led volunteer trips to Living Positive Kenya eight times over the past fifteen years, and every time I’ve come home changed more than I could ever change anything there.
You’ll be in the dance circle. You’ll be on a bench in a one-room school in the slum. You’ll sit with a woman as she tells you, maybe out loud for the first time, what her own family did the day they found out she was HIV-positive. Then she’ll show you the jewelry she now makes and sells, the small loan that became a real business, and you’ll understand exactly why we keep coming back.
Whatever you do for a living, bring it. Teachers, nurses, builders, artists, small-business owners. The community’s needs shift year to year, and the work we take on together shifts with them.
Everyone calls her Mum.
Mary founded Living Positive Kenya to give women living with HIV/AIDS somewhere to go when their own families and tribes turned them away over the stigma of a diagnosis. People who spend a day with her reach for the same two comparisons: Mother Teresa’s patience, Oprah’s presence. Neither one quite covers it.
Under her, the organization has grown into something the women themselves run: a school for their kids, a garden that became a working farm, a workshop full of beadwork and bags, and a small-loan fund that’s launched dozens of businesses. The community isn’t surviving. It’s building.
The work, day to day
The moves go both ways.
Most days end in a backyard, dancing, connecting, and chatting with the local kids and women, in partnership with Dance Alchemy®. The kids teach you their steps a lot faster than you teach them yours. It’s the loosest, loudest, least translatable part of every trip, and usually the part people talk about first when they get home.
Stories that aren’t easy, told to people who came to listen.
This is where you’ll hear it directly: poverty, hardship, being cast out of a community or a tribe over an HIV diagnosis. It’s hard to sit through and more important to sit through than almost anything else on the trip. What follows (the counseling, the training, the businesses) only makes sense once you’ve heard where it started.
A vegetable patch that grew into a farm.
Past trips helped start a small community garden that has since grown into a working farm feeding families in the neighborhood. Days in the field with the school run alongside it: lessons, supplies, and time with kids whose classroom is one room in the middle of the slum.
Beadwork, bags, and a business plan.
Many of the women make jewelry and bags to sell, launched with a small loan from Living Positive Kenya’s microloan fund. You’ll spend time in the workshop with them, buy directly from the women who made what you’re holding, and see exactly where that money goes next.
Then, the Maasai Mara
After more than a week of close, human work, the trip opens up. A full day driving out through the Kenyan countryside, with stops at a few local spots along the way. Two full days on safari in the Maasai Mara watching for giraffes, lions, elephants, hippos, and zebras from an open vehicle. Then a half day driving back, followed by an afternoon and evening of integration and closing ceremonies.
An afternoon with a Maasai community
While we’re out near the Mara, we’re welcomed as guests into a Maasai manyatta, a homestead built and run by the community itself. It’s their invitation, on their terms: we’re shown around by the people who live there, and the visit directly supports the community that hosts us.
The adumu, the jumping dance
We’re greeted with the adumu, the dance the Maasai moran, their word for the community’s young warriors, are known for. We’re pulled in to try it ourselves. It’s less about how high you jump and more about being welcomed into something that’s been theirs for generations.
Making fire by hand
No matches, no lighter. Just wood, friction, and patience. One of the men shows us the traditional method for starting a fire, and lets anyone who wants to try it themselves.
Inside a manyatta
We step inside one of the mud-and-dung huts the women of the homestead build by hand, and hear directly from a family what daily life actually looks like here, from raising cattle to raising kids.
April 4–17, fourteen days
Arrive & settle in
Land in Nairobi, drive up into the Ngong Hills, and meet the women and staff of Living Positive Kenya. Along the way: church with Mum, and a visit to the Africa Yoga Project in Nairobi, before the program starts in earnest.
Live the program
School in the mornings, workshop or garden work in the afternoons, dance most evenings. The women’s circle happens more than once. Whatever project the community needs that year, this is when it takes shape.
Drive to the Mara
A full day on the road through the Kenyan countryside, stopping at a few local spots along the way. It doubles as an integration day: space for deep conversation and working out how to carry what you’ve just experienced back home.
On safari
Two full days in the Maasai Mara: game drives, big sky, a visit to a Maasai community, and a different pace entirely.
Drive back & closing ceremonies
A half day on the road back toward Nairobi, then an afternoon and evening of integration and closing ceremonies, time to sit with everything before the flight home.
Head home
Fly out of Nairobi carrying a lot more than you packed.
Land cost, per person
Included
- Accommodation & daily breakfast
- Lunch and dinner every day
- Daily ground transportation
- Airport pickup & drop-off
- 4-day Maasai Mara safari
Not included
- International airfare
- Visa & travel insurance
- Personal spending
- Trip donation to Living Positive Kenya, if you choose to give one
No experience required. A willingness to show up, is.
Any skill is useful
Teachers, nurses, builders, artists, business owners, and people who just want to set up chairs and dance. All of it gets used.
Mostly first-timers
Most people on this trip have never been to Kenya, and that’s the norm, not the exception. A rare few keep coming back year after year. One person has now made the trip nine times.
Moderately active
Expect sun, dirt floors, uneven ground, and long days on your feet: nothing extreme, but not a lounge-chair trip either.
Open to hard stories
You’ll hear things that are difficult to hear. Coming ready to listen, not fix, matters more than any other qualification.
From past trips
Come see why we keep going back.
Spots are kept small on purpose. Apply below, or email Brooke directly with any questions about the trip, the cost, or what to pack.
Apply for the trip
A few details to get started. Brooke reads every application herself and follows up by email.
