Globe-Trotting Skincare

I’m on the trail of finding a good organic source of avocado oil here in Kenya and so spent the day with a farmer friend in Naivasha who grows many different tropical fruits. Avocados grow well here and are a cheap, plentiful food for the local people – I bought a big basket full and worked out they cost about 3p each! They were twice the size of anything I’ve seen back in the UK and far tastier too as they ripen naturally in the Kenyan sunshine. Avocados are fabulously good for the skin as they are naturally rich in essential fatty acids which help prevent moisture loss. They are also a good source of lecithin (useful for processing cholesterol in the body) and also provide good amounts of Vitamin E. We eat them chopped into salads at lunchtime almost every day here. After strolling through her fruit trees, Colleen showed me the latest addition to her family – three tiny baby warthogs, recently rescued. They are so young that they have to be fed powdered baby milk with mashed up Weetabix and Colleen has started to add oils to their feed as their skins are so dry. I told her that this is exactly what I did for my four children when they were small and suffering from patches of dry skin and eczema! These babies really were very cute and incredibly friendly – although they’ll soon outgrow the small, fuzzy stage and grow sharp little tusks, so they’ll have to be re-integrated back into the wild before long. Returning home in the evening dusk we had our own wild animal gathering at the waterhole which was just teaming with game. A herd of young buffalo were there, alongside half a dozen huge hippo, twenty or so zebra and some impala. It was fascinating to watch the animal hierarchy – first the buffalo came and dominated the water, seeing off the hippo who waited in the wings. They were only allowed to drink once the buffalo had finished, followed by the zebra and lastly the antelopes. Finally a lone warthog trotted up when all was quiet.

A funny thing then happened later in the evening. I went to supper at a friend’s house to celebrate the birthday of a young Dutch vet who has recently moved here with her flower farmer husband. There were only about 8 of us there and I took her a small bag of skincare treats as a birthday present – a Cleanse and Polish Starter Kit (UK, US) (of course), the Instant Boost Skin Tonic Spray (UK, US)(perfect for the hot weather here) and a Smoothing Line Serum (UK, US) to help rehydrate after sun damage. She unwrapped the products and we started chatting about them when I saw one of the other guests staring at the packaging in disbelief – “where did you get that?” she asked. “My mother came to stay at Christmas and brought me some of this – she’s just started buying it on QVC and says it’s fantastic – I’ve been using it since Christmas Day and my skin is so much better, I love it – how come you have it here too?” When I told her who I was, her chin nearly hit the floor! What a very small world we live in – it seems Naturally Active Skincare is a real globe-trotter and you’ll find it in even the most remote homes.

Liquid Treasures

This morning I flew with Claire Jones, my glamorous commercial pilot friend in her small safari plane across the vastness that is the Rift Valley from Naivasha to Athi River. We passed Mount Longonot and flew over the famous Ngong Hills, that resemble a row of knuckles on a fist. Whenever I see these green hills I’m always reminded of the first line of Karen Blixen’s famous Out of Africa “I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills”. Actually she had a farm on the outskirts of Nairobi (the area of Karen was named after her), but that’s poetic license for you – at least she would have seen the Ngongs from her veranda view.

We landed on a grass strip on the edge of environmental researcher David Hopcraft’s ranch where we were met by Wayne Barrett of Earth Oils. I’d come to visit his oil processing plant at Athi River and to see some of the many wonderful botanical oils that pass through his doors here. A former farmer forced to flee his essential oil farm in Zimbabwe with little more than the shirt on his back, Wayne and his business partner Campbell have built a wonderful plant oil processing company, with high quality facilities to cold-press many different organically grown oils, including sweet almond, passion flower seed, macadamia nut and shea butter. It’s interesting to hear how these plant oils directly benefit so many small scale family farmers here in Kenya – and other African countries such as Uganda and Sudan too. For example, passion fruit juice is a popular drink here and many small farms sell their passion fruit to the juice pressers. Previously, the seed would have been discarded, but now, these families can in effect sell their crop twice – once for the juice and again for the seed oil. Even the left-over ‘cake’ of empty seed husks can be sold for high-protein animal feed so nothing is wasted. I especially admire the enterprise Wayne has set up for the local macadamia nut farmers: The nuts are collected from the small farmers and graded, with the best going to the snack food industry and the less perfect specimens going for oil processing. All the nuts are now used in this system and the left-over mulch again goes for animal feed – even the macadamia shell husks are used as renewable fuel for the oil pressing machine – a completely perfect eco-system with no waste and lots of benefit for the local economy (and the environment). Brilliant.

Wayne and I discussed many different plant oils – a shared passion – and I learnt a lot more about the way these liquid treasures are processed, which is just as important as how they are grown when it comes to assuring the best quality. Cold-pressing produces the highest grade as the oils are broken down by any form of heat, which encourages rancidity. Unfortunately, cold-pressing is very much harder to do as the cell structure of the oils is harder and so yields less oil. Cold-pressing is also time consuming and expensive, but the resulting oil is far superior. Earth Oils are committed to their cold-processing production and it was encouraging to make contact with a company as committed to quality ingredients as we are.

North to Samburu

I have been in Kenya since just before Christmas, combining family festivities on our small farm here with some botanical research and field trips. So I must begin this entry by saying a big Thank You to all those who kindly sent messages of concern after the turbulent elections here. I’m pleased to say that we haven’t been anywhere near the pockets of tribal unrest, which have been in far-flung areas of Western province and in some slum areas of Nairobi. The international media painted a picture of an entire nation in flames, which has been very far from my experience travelling around the country. I have only seen calm good humour from those around us – coupled with great sadness for those affected by the localised riots. Everyone here hopes and prays for a swift and peaceful electoral resolution, but in the meantime, fears the damage has been done to the country’s economy which relies so heavily on tourism. Each employed Kenyan feeds 10 other people and the Kenyan Association of Tour Operators estimates the industry’s woes will affect around a million people, plunging more families here into hardship. To put the awful headlines into perspective, there hasn’t been a single incident involving a foreigner or tourist since the crisis began, yet the holiday and travel cancellations has already lost the country $1 billion in the last 10 days. Kenyans are an incredibly industrious and entrepreneurial people but this will be a very difficult time for them and a slow road to economic recovery.

On a happier note, I have had wonderful trips to stunningly beautiful parts of this lovely country, travelling firstly north to Samburu, home of the eponymous Samburu tribe, some of the most remarkable people in all Africa. I stayed with friends from the UK at a new eco-lodge called Sasaab, perched high in the hills in the middle of what seems like nowhere. Sasaab is one of a new breed of eco-friendly co-operatives, where the Samburu lease the land to investors, who in turn run an eco-friendly holiday sanctuary. The revenue is shared and the Samburu use these essential funds to pay for their children’s education and medical care. You can see pictures of this extraordinary Kenyan hideaway at www.tamimiea.com and I highly recommend it (and the other eco-lodges featured) as a holiday of a lifetime with a real difference, that makes a difference.

One of my trips involved travelling by camel train and I visited a Samburu village, where I was greeted by women dressed in colourful beads who danced, sang and clapped as I arrived. They put beaded necklaces over my head as a welcome gesture and made me dance a strange neck-bobbing jig with them before showing me how they live in this extraordinarily harsh but beautiful landscape. My translator (a very fit Samburu warrior called Matthew) explained how the women do 95% of all the work (nothing new there then), including building the low huts out of twigs, sticks and goat skins. They tend and milk the goats, bring up the children, cook and clean as well as make beaded bracelets and necklaces for the women and warriors to wear, as well as to sell to travellers like me. As for the males, the young boys herd the goats between grazing; in their late teens and early twenties they become warriors (watching over their cattle, protecting their community) and in later years they are the village elders who sit under trees playing games and deciding important tribal matters. Not much grows in this arid landscape, although they do use the medicinal properties of the Leleshwa bush, which has antiseptic properties similar to tea tree. In some areas, this pale green leaf is being collected and distilled into a therapeutic essential oil, and I’m bringing some home for us to investigate further. They also use twigs from the toothbrush tree to clean their teeth and massage gums, as these have useful antiseptic and anti-inflammatory properties to prevent gum disease. The vast Samburu landscape is coloured a deep brownish red from the earth, with dots of Leleshwa green and the wait-a-bit thorn bush (which gets its name from the annoying way it snags skin and clothing as you pass by, causing you to ‘wait a bit’ as you carefully unhook yourself from its prickles). Every now and then there is a vibrant splash of shocking pink flowers on a Desert Rose bush, which looks very beautiful but is actually deadly poisonous: It’s what the Samburu warriors use to make poison-tipped arrows. It causes instant paralysis, which I guess makes it a tribal version of Botox.

Christmas and Research in Kenya

I’m now back in Kenya for Christmas, combining time spent with family and friends with some new botanical ingredient research in the New Year too. One species our botanist Anna Macleod and I have been investigating for several years now is the fascinating ‘sausage tree’, so-called because of the long sausage-shaped pods that hang from its tall branches, not unlike salamis hanging in an Italian deli’s window. The sausage tree (real name Kigelia africana) has some very unusual and interesting skin-tightening and firming properties, as well as being a useful local antiseptic and anti-inflammatory ingredient used here in herbal medicine. It’s also a very attractive tree, with large, dark green, fig-like leaves that provide useful shade cover in very hot climates. We have an extensive tree planting programme here on our small farm and one of the first things we do on arrival is to check on their progress. I spent the best part of today in thick-soled, thorn-proof boots walking the boundaries to make sure that all our newly planted trees are being regularly watered and protected from marauding giraffe, who like nothing better than to nibble out the tasty central crown shoots of a young thorn tree. I was especially keen to check on the progress of the three small Kigelia africana planted last time I was here. We chose a hot, dry, dusty area at the back of our boundary for these, in the hope that they will one day provide a useful respite from the relentless sun. Fortunately, they don’t seem to be to the giraffe’s liking and they all look healthy and strong, with lots of shiny green leaves sprouting.

There’s no doubt that extreme sun exposure causes many problems for the skin, especially in tropical countries or locations close to the Equator. The arid desert plains of Kenya are especially harsh as there is low humidity and little moisture in the air, so the sun over-dries the face in an instant. I’ve been especially pleased that I packed several jars of our Superskin Moisturiser, as its high levels of skin-repairing Essential Fatty Acids (EFA’s) and plant oils are fantastically re-moisturising without being in the slightest bit sticky. It’s so rich and nourishing that I can feel my skin being instantly replenished and soothed after a long day in the extreme heat. I’m obviously using our Sunshade SPF25 when outside too, but the additional antioxidant benefits of the pomegranate and natural-source Vitamin E are especially soothing and repairing. By contrast, I’ve just received the last instalment from Dr Amy Rogers, the researcher we helped sponsor for new research into climate change on an Antarctic expedition. There are probably not many skin creams currently being exposed to two such climatic extremes so many thousands of miles apart – and it’s good to know that Superskin’s botanical formulation holds up well under pressure! Here is Dr Roger’s last journal entry:

Dr Amy Rogers writes:
“I’ve now been in Antarctica for about 5 weeks. We were due to fly out last week, on December 10th. Unfortunately an Antarctic snowstorm has meant that we have been stranded here with no possibility of an aircraft landing to pick us up. We haven't seen the sun for nine days now and have had total whiteout conditions. At the moment visibility is down to a few metres. We've also had snow drifts up to six feet high, so we have been busy digging our tent out of the snow each day to ensure we don’t end up buried. The weather has cleared and we are hoping that it will be possible to clear the ice runway of over 6000 tonnes of snow by tomorrow morning. If the plane from Punta Arenas can’t land tomorrow, then we will most likely be stuck in Antarctica for another week. This means that we could be spending Christmas in Antarctica. We’ve all got our fingers crossed that the snow-blowers will be able to move the snow off the runaway before the weather closes in again. This last week has brought some new challenges to test my Superskin moisturiser. Now back at the main basecamp we spend a lot of time moving between mess tents and the outdoors. This can involve temperature changes of 30-40 degrees. Moving between these different temperatures doesn’t seem to have presented too many problems. I’ve been really pleased with the way that the Superskin moisturiser has worked at protecting my face in such extreme conditions. It’s made my Antarctic expedition a lot more comfortable. Instead of the lasting skin damage that I was worried I would get from being here, I think that my skin feels better than it did before I went away.”

Grassroots in Kenya

I am back in Kenya for a quick half-term break and to catch up with some friends involved in eco-tourism, organic faming and also to see one of the charity projects we support. Grassroots is a wonderful ‘umbrella’ organisation that has many small ground-level projects under its wings. Grassroots itself is a Christian humanitarian aid charity and that supports initiatives in many developing countries around the world, including Kenya. One of these is something called Watu Wa Maana, a street children’s shelter in Ruiru, about an hour’s drive East of Nairobi. This is a project we, as a company, have supported for a couple of years now – the first year we helped to fund a bathroom block and this year we’re providing funding to help enlarge their tin-shack kitchen. Watu Wa Maana means Very Important People in Swahili, and these words are written large above it’s makeshift building.  Like almost every African city, Nairobi is full of street children - kids who live and sleep on the streets, begging and scavenging for food and scraps. Sanitation and health issues are inevitably very poor and the children are easy prey for pimps, dealers and criminals. Not all the children are orphans (although many have lost one or both parents to HIV-AIDS), some are just kicked out of home as there is no room for them to live or food to eat. Fortunately for some of the childen in Ruiru, there is Watu Wa Maana.

I arranged to meet one of the main directors of the project, Wanjiru, at a local petrol station on the main highway out of Nairobi, so she could guide me into the maze of downtown Ruiru. I spotted her immediately – a smiling African lady sitting in her battered white Nissan car, and followed her off the main road and down a series of dusty tracks. Pulling in to what looked like a derelict building site, we were at once surrounded by hoards of laughing, shouting, noisy young children, most of whom were clutching plastic beakers of porridge. “We’ve arrived at tea time!” smiled Wanjiru, showing me the enormous cooking pot filled with grey gruel-like sludge. “Would you like a cup?” they asked? “you save it for the children” I tactfully declined. Five or six of the smaller boys and girls immediately latched onto me, tugging at my hands and pulling me into the centre, keen to show me around. Wanjiru explained that they currently care for 52 children, from the age of 4 to about 16. They sleep in the centre (two to a low single bed, two beds to a room) and have basic washing facilities (a cold shower or tap with a plastic bucket beneath). Meals are cooked in huge steel pots over an open fire and seemed to consist mostly of porridge and a Kenyan culinary classic called ugali and beans (a bit like spinach and pulses mixed into a stew). Many of the children were literally in rags, most had no shoes. It was like stepping back in time to a Victorian workhouse, or worse. I have to admit it was hard to fight back the tears as these cheerful, outgoing, bright and optimistic youngsters proudly showed us their home: You are not likely to have seen anything quite so basic being lived in by children. Wanjiru caught my watering eyes and squeezed my arm, saying “don’t worry, I used to cry all the time when I came here, but remember, these are the lucky ones”. And she’s right. The work done by this centre is extraordinary. From housing, clothing, medical care and food, these young children are getting basic humanitarian care. “All we do is love them” says Wanjiru. Actually, she does a lot more – including helping to raise sponsorship and funding for school placements (there is no such thing as a free education here). About a dozen of her children have funded school places, the rest are waiting.

Before I left, the children grouped together to sing for us – a very moving song all about happiness and hope. I was also taken to see the Grassroot’s goat (co-incidentally named Wanjiru!) who had just arrived as a donation, to provide goats milk for the kitchen. I have been involved with several ‘send a goat’ gift schemes over the years – for my fortieth birthday some years ago I asked my family and friends for forty goats for Africa – but this was the first time I’ve come nose to nose with a donated animal. It’s great to see the end result and visits like these are vital to get good information for us when deciding where to spend our annual charity budget. I then got a list of the things they are most in need of, which include a new cooker and pot for the extra mouths to feed, as well as on-going children’s education. Wanjiru also said she had just received a quote for replacing all their light fittings and bulbs with low energy ones (electricity is hugely expensive in Kenya). It just so happened that this amount was exactly what I had in my purse, so I was able to hand this over for an immediate result. Fantastic.

I drove away waving goodbyes out of the Land Cruiser window and promising to return, so I’ll write again after our next visit which will probably be just after Christmas. With a bit of luck I may even be able to take a few books and toys for some festive cheer next time.

For further information visit www.grassroots.org.uk. If our Christmas gift catalogue has inspired you to think about your present shopping, you may also like to visit the Great Alternative Gifts section on the Grassroots website, where you can buy a school desk (£10), a safe oil lamp (£3), two mosquito nets (£4) or, if you’re feeling really flush, a pregnant cow (£200). You might even find a goat called Wanjiru.

Back in Naivasha, Kenya, I decided to continue my research into ‘fairmiles’ versus ‘airmiles’. Went to visit Harry Milbank, who runs a successful flower and vegetable farm in the beautiful foothills of Mount Longonot. I was interested to hear how they put Fairtrade principles into practice. Fairtrade is one of the most stringent certification bodies and operates higher standards than say, Tesco Gold Standard, although this is still obviously a step in the right direction. The difference being that Fairtrade requires workers’ representation and its social and eco-standards of compliance are very high. In addition, 8% of the revenue from crop sales comes back to the farm and workers representatives allocate this money to be spent within the community. Over 1000 people are employed here, each one benefiting from a weekly wage, free transport, free lunch and medical services plus maternity benefits over and above what’s legally required. They even stagger their rotas to enable breastfeeding mums to return to their babies during the day. Staff can have interest-free loans to buy bicycles and TVs and can buy maize meal at-cost as part of their staple diet. There is no question that farms such as these are a vital part of the local ecomony.

I had a thorough tour of the entire set-up here, including the flower packhouse, where staff were busy packing roses for Tesco. Each Tesco bunch had to be labelled with a ‘by air’ sticker and there is concern that this will penalise African developing countries, who have no choice but to airfreight fresh produce. This is in contrast to European farmers, who not only truck their goods thousands of miles across the Continent, but have to use much more energy in the form of light and heat as they do not have year-round natural sunshine to grow crops in. As one farmer remarked wryly “there’s more CO2 produced in a 10 mile stretch of the M25 than producing roses”. It’s a hard decision, but when you take into account how many are employed here and the chance to bring developing countries out of poverty, I would personally choose to buy the Kenyan produce. For me, Fairmiles win over Airmiles.

This farm is not large by Naivasha standards, producing around 30 million blooms on 16 hectares each year. Most of its produce though is vegetables, a massive 10 tonnes a day for delivery to Europe’s supermarkets. Two-thirds are grown in soil and one third grown with hydroponics, meaning they are grown in a trough filled with something like pumice and irrigated with nutrient-rich water. This can be a polluting business, but here impressive changes have been made. The water is collected and filtered through natural charcoal and sand filters to clean it before it is returned to the lake where it comes from. There are also plans for an oxidised water system to naturally oxygenate the water instead of using chlorine bleaching. The nutrient-rich crop feed comes from their own compost made from the cut flower and vegetable waste and fed with worms. After 8 weeks, the worms have turned this green matter into a fabulously rich compost which crumbles easily into water to make vermi-liquid, which is then applied to the crops. A simple, old-fashioned process which has completely eliminated the farm’s requirement for chemical fertilizers. This more holistic management of the soil has the double benefit of fewer chemicals used plus improved soil and plant health. As I have learnt over the years, good farming practices are based on healthy soil management, which is why the UK’s leading organic farming movement is called the Soil Association. Next stop was to look at natural forms of pest control and again, a simple approach is the most effective. Tiny wasp-like insects (about the size of a flea) are placed next to parasitic aphids on a plant to eat them. These good bugs (phytoseiulus) basically eat all the bad bugs (spider mites), reducing the need for insecticide sprays. In this case, the need for chemical sprays has dropped by a staggering 90% simply by using bio-pest control. Finally, in the test-bed area for future development I saw a patch of a bio-diesel crop called Jatropha being grown. This noteworthy plant can be turned into an oil which can be mixed in at 20% with regular diesel. It is especially interesting as it can be grown in arid regions not usually planted, so won’t take up valuable food crop land. The only downside is that it takes three years to harvest, so it may be a while before we find pumps marked ‘Jatropha’ at the local filling station. But you read about it here first!

Drove with my Kenyan farming friend, Tom Lawrence, out of Nanuki and up a bumpy dirt track road towards the district of Timau, where he and his partners have a newly acquired piece of land ready for high-altitude farming. Of the many possible projects we have been discussing over the last few days, some of the most interesting and include organic eucalyptus oil growing, rosehip seed oil and rose water distillation. The latter would involve planting the highly fragrant and much-prized Rosa Damescena, the traditional rose variety grown for its essential oil and fragrant hydrolat (rose water). The advantage of growing at altitude is the limited rainfall combined with intense UV-rays, which seem to concentrate the essence of the plant and intensify its fragrance. This is possibly why our high-altitude lavender oil (from the Provencal hillside in the South of France) smells so much better than other varieties. Invariably more expensive, it produces a far more superior aroma and makes all the difference to the end product. This extra effort and attention to detail is very much at the heart of all we do when formulating new products as well as our existing Naturally Active Skincare. The crops that will be grown here will provide much-needed employment for several hundred people and will also be grown on eco-guidelines to conserve water and avoid toxic pesticides. Although Kenyan farmers are sometimes highlighted as being bad for the environment in terms of ‘airmiles’, it is very important to look beyond this and consider the wider impact on the local people and the environment with the eco-friendly practices being employed. A study timed to coincide with Valentine’s day earlier this year showed how buying Kenyan red roses was actually better for the environment than buying Dutch ones, even though they travel further. This is because they are grown in a more ecologically sound way in year-round natural African sunshine, not under glass with energy-hungry artificial heat and light. This has led me to think about the term ‘fairmiles’ as one which takes all aspects of growing a crop and its benefit to a struggling community into consideration, not just aviation fuel.

Leaving the comfort and very warm hospitality of Ol Lentille, the next stage of this field trip was to fly back down to Nanuki and meet up with Tom Lawrence, a dedicated horticulturalist and flower-specialist with a particular expertise for growing fragrant blooms at high altitude. He and I first met several years ago when I was on holiday in Naivasha and we fell into conversation about organic oil growing. Back then he was a conventional flower farmer, an industry not known for its environmental practise. But his dream was to farm in a more natural and eco-friendly way and this is now what he is doing in partnership with other like-minded flower farmers. His organisation specialises in growing fragrant flowers for the UK, including David Austin roses, as well as herbs and interesting foliage crops such as eucalyptus. We discussed the possibilities of growing our Eucalyptus globulus, which we use in Cleanse & Polish and our gentle Face Exfoliator. Although not certified organic, Tom uses many eco-friendly farming practices, such as growing banks of African marigolds (tagetes) to distract the bugs away from the roses so they don’t have to spray with toxic insecticides. They also use sticky strips of yellow tape attached to poles set between the roses. These attract the insects (like fly paper) and avoid having to use chemical insecticides. Because they farm on organic principles here, they grow nitrogen-fixing crops in rotation to fertilise the soil between crops. Some of the best for this are beans and peas, which are then shipped to a wholesaler before ending up on the shelves of Waitrose. Another good eco-friendly vegetable crop is ‘tender stem broccoli’, not only delicious and extremely healthy to eat but very useful for organic farmers too. The edible stems are hand-picked and sent to Waitrose, leaving the main stalks and foliage behind to be ploughed back into the ground. This then produces natural bio-fumigant isocyanates, which rid the soil of fungal diseases and unwanted root-knot nematodes. A much better option than polluting the ground with pesticides – and cheaper too. The next time I see ‘tender stem broccoli’ on Waitrose’ shelves, I shall think of Tom, his eco-friendly farming practises and the hundreds of Kenyan workers who depend on this employment to survive.

Spent the night at a fabulous new lodge called Ol Lentille on the edge of Laikipia. A new community-run development built on the very top of a high mountain peak with beautiful rooms, fabulous locally-produced organic food and the most epic view I have truly ever seen. Stayed in ‘the eyrie’, an extraordinary set of circular rooms perched on the highest point (hence its name). There is a spectacular 360 degree view of plains, forests and mountain ranges – Mount Kenya to one side, the Matthews mountain range to the other. All this and not a single house, person, car or building in sight. Truly awesome. Because it is so high, the area has its own micro-climate and it has year-round sunshine and very little rain. There is a bore-hole for water supplies and they run mostly on solar-power, so are highly eco-friendly too. One of the best points about this place is that it is run by the local community and profits go back into supporting local projects, such as education, training, apprenticeships, healthcare and wildlife conservation. Surely a far better and more sustainable option than the profits being siphoned off for overseas business consortiums. This is the way ahead for eco-tourism.

http://www.ol-lentille.com

I am back in Kenya to visit some potential organic essential oil and plant oil farmers, hoping we can work directly with the growers and not the middle-men. At 9.15 we took off in a small propeller Twin-Otter plane, an excellent scheduled daily service run by Air Kenya. The Captain turned from the tiny cockpit to give us our safety briefing “emergency exit is the door you came in, sick bags in the seat pocket in front of you” followed by breakfast service: he passed back a small Tupperware container filled with boiled sweets. I asked if I had to switch my mobile phone off “no, that’s alright” and if it was OK to sit behind the cockpit to watch him fly on instruments “sure thing”. Take off was so smooth we hardly noticed we were airborne, soon flying over Nairobi National Park, above the crocodiles greedily gliding through muddy pools and the herds of gently grazing zebra. Flying over the disgraceful Kibera slum – the seemingly endless shanty town in the heart of Nairobi (where The Constant Gardener was filmed). There are plans to re-house the people living here into new, modern homes with proper sanitation, but from the air you can see the vastness of the tin-shack town and the tiny pockets of new-build housing by comparison. We headed due north towards Nanuki – a short 30 minute hop that would take many dusty hours by road. The land below beautifully green thanks to the recent rains, with caramel-coloured rivers and red dirt roads snaking through the lush landscape. The fertile land here produces two or three crops a year in the highlands, mainly tea, coffee and vegetables such as green beans. Every inch seems taken up with agriculture, from small family-run shambas (vegetable gardens) to larger, more commercial enterprises. Approaching Nanuki, the corrugated-iron roofed houses become fewer, the forests denser and the land generally hillier. What looks like a short car ride away on a map can take many laborious hours to drive as so many hills get in the way and the dirt tracks just peter-out. Hence most people running businesses fly to-and-fro and it’s almost as common in some far-flung communities to have a small plane as it is to have a car.

From Nanuki’s tarmac airstrip we switched to a Tropic Air plane – even smaller than the first. Hardly bigger than a microlight. This time just a single charming pilot called Jamie Vernon, no boiled sweets but plenty of interesting chat about the landscape we were flying over. Just 15 minutes in the air and we touched down on the grass at Ngare Ndare, the airstrip next to a botanical ranch run by John and Penny Horsey, some of the most well-respected and established organic herb growers in Kenya. We were just in time to see piles of rose geranium being turned into essential oil – great timing! We watched as the fragrant leaves and stalks of the plants were forked up into huge steel vats before being pressurised under steam to distil the fragrant oil. One huge vatful of plant material is distilled into just 75mls of precious essential oil. It is a hugely labour intensive, time-consuming process and no-one is going to get rich as a small-scale essential oil producer. As we walked around the herb fields, John and Penny explained how the organic oil business was gradually being re-built in Kenya after scores of farmers went bankrupt in the 1950’s. Back then, the original rose-scented Bourbon geranium plant rootstock was brought from La Reunion and cultivated across Kenya. But the advent of much cheaper, chemically-copied perfume oils destroyed the market as the big fragrance houses switched to using synthetics. As a result, many small farming communities went under. Hopefully this trend is starting to reverse as people appreciate the value of natural, renewable ingredients. John and Penny have even managed to revive some of the original La Reunion root-stock and so are growing some of the finest quality, sweet-scented geranium oil to exacting certified organic standards. I have to say, I was hugely impressed with their operation and am bringing back some of their freshly-made Bourbon geranium oil for us to work with. Whilst there, we also saw their calendula harvest and watched the highly labour-intensive process of hand-picking each flower head, which is then gently laid in the warm sunshine to dry before being bagged and tagged ready for shipment. Even their equipment in the drying area is highly eco-friendly as it is totally solar-powered. Overall, the Horsey’s employ aver 120 local people, providing income, education, healthcare and, most importantly, a future for hundreds more children and other dependents in this deprived area. I sincerely hope we can do more in the future to work with them and others like them.