By Bas & Suzanne, Lamai Serengeti
Yes…finally!! Our very first ‘blog’ moment as the new camp managers of Nomad’s new camp, Lamai Serengeti, and what a privilege it is to share remarkable moments of our day-to-day lives around camp with you. Having arrived in camp nearly two weeks ago, we are really living the excitement of this new and adventurous challenge ahead of us.
That building is ‘something else’ in Africa we already knew, but that everything is as handmade as it is in Lamai Serengeti is new to us. True, some machines are involved but there aren’t many. And the result really is very different. The whole camp gently seems to portray the unique signatures of all the people who have been involved in building it; from moving huge granite boulders to wiring the office building, it’s great to see that the building crew is so enthusiastic about what they have just achieved.
The spectacular surroundings of Lamai Serengeti is all around you, it is easy to be carried away by the thought that we are soon to host one of the ten natural wonders of the world: the largest mammal migration on earth.
And however opposite in many ways, it is an achievement of a totally different order that actually can be described as Lamai Serengeti’s wonder of today: with the expertise of two AFSAT (satellite) heroes from Arusha, today we were connected with the outside world. With the digital highway leading straight into camp, soon – and not surprisingly - we caught the very first people trying to catch a glimpse of how the rest of the world looks from this far flung corner.
Today suddenly this remote northern section of the Serengeti seems a little bit closer to the rest of the world.
Bastiaan ("Bas") Rosenkamp & Suzanne Scheffer have recently joined us at Nomad, both originally from the Netherlands. They were bitten by the hospitality bug in Europe, running a string of small luxury hotel chalets in ski destinations in Austria, Switzerland and France. In search of warmer climates, they moved to Africa and a beach lodge in Tanzania where the cool ocean breezes convinced them they were now definitely on the right continent.
After the beach came a stint in Zambia, working for Wilderness Safaris in one of their well known mobile camps. They realised, at this stage, that they were without doubt safari people rather than beach people, but also decided that it was Tanzania that had "stolen their heart" and so it was a return to East Africa, and Nomad. And they're now happily ensconced at our newest camp Lamai Serengeti, where they'll be regularly blogging about living in the most exciting new camp in the Serengeti.
