William Powys came to ranch in what was then British East Africa in 1913. This was the time of the real pioneers. Motor vehicles were few and from the time that Will Powys got off the train that had taken him on the three day journey from the Mombasa to Nairobi and then Naivasha he would have been completely dependent on horses and buggies and his own strong legs. This was no hardship for him because the farm he had left in Somerset in England was deep in the country side and horses and human legs took people for goodly distances. What he would not have been prepared for would have been the dryness and dust and thorns and the glaring brightness of the day light. His first sighting of vast herds of wild animals and then the hugeness of the Great Rift Valley would have delighted him for he had the eyes of an artist and the soul of a romantic.

He was soon living the lonely and remote life as a manager of the Cole family's great flocks of sheep grazing, over wide expanses of dry plains country. He would have immediately had to face the never ending and endlessly varying challenges of lions, leopards, cheetahs, hyenas, jackals and even humans who had a keen taste for mutton.

All too soon there came the call to arms to fight the war in German East Africa. Will joined the East African Mounted Rifles. He was soon drafted away to work for the most challenging job of procuring cattle for the rations of beef for the troops. This entailed herding cattle on foot all the way from the Belgian Congo around the southern end of Lake Victoria to feed the hungry troops hundreds of miles through hostile country all the way. 

In the years following the war, Will developed the lovely farm called Kisima.
Will married Elisabeth Douglas/nee Cross who was the most perfect partner for a pioneering rancher. She had won the Military Medal for her distinguished service as a VAD in France. She came to Kenya in 1920 to develop her "Soldier Settler Farm".  But she was soon lured away by the attraction of hunting and then moved in to the hard business of ox wagon transport.  Will met Elisabeth under the most romantic circumstances when he was fortunately able to give her a pistol that had fallen from her pack when she was riding the high trail over the Aberdare range of mountains.

Will Powys' daughter, Rose would in due course meet and marry Jack Dyer's son, Tony.

Jack Dyer was wounded during fighting in France in Wolrd War I. In order to escape from the awfulness of trench warfare he volunteered to join the Nigerian Troops fighting in German East Africa. By 1915 he was questioning the wisdom of that move as he had to march on starvation rations over the length of the country that was to become Tanganyika and later Tanzania. He was wounded for the second time and was also suffering from malaria and was sent to Nairobi to recover. There were over 100,000 casualties to our side, mainly from malaria, in this campaign.
At this time Jack would have crossed paths with Will Powys for Will too was sent back to Nairobi very ill with malaria. But they were not to meet for another 40 years when Will's daughter Rose married Jack's son Tony.

Jack married Lulu, the daughter of a Swedish doctor who was born in London, who came out to Limuru in 1919. She was a renowned artist, and very musical, and had a small dairy heard, and kept a beautiful garden, most of her time was spent looking after her 4 sons (one of whom was Tony).During the recession, she made furniture from old fuel boxes (fuel would come in 4 gallon sealed debies in a wooden box).

William Powys came to ranch in what was then British East Africa in 1913. This was the time of the real pioneers. Motor vehicles were few and from the time that Will Powys got off the train that had taken him on the three day journey from the Mombasa to Nairobi and then Naivasha he would have been completely dependent on horses and buggies and his own strong legs. This was no hardship for him because the farm he had left in Somerset in England was deep in the country side and horses and human legs took people for goodly distances. What he would not have been prepared for would have been the dryness and dust and thorns and the glaring brightness of the day light. His first sighting of vast herds of wild animals and then the hugeness of the Great Rift Valley would have delighted him for he had the eyes of an artist and the soul of a romantic.

He was soon living the lonely and remote life as a manager of the Cole family's great flocks of sheep grazing, over wide expanses of dry plains country. He would have immediately had to face the never ending and endlessly varying challenges of lions, leopards, cheetahs, hyenas, jackals and even humans who had a keen taste for mutton.

All too soon there came the call to arms to fight the war in German East Africa. Will joined the East African Mounted Rifles. He was soon drafted away to work for the most challenging job of procuring cattle for the rations of beef for the troops. This entailed herding cattle on foot all the way from the Belgian Congo around the southern end of Lake Victoria to feed the hungry troops hundreds of miles through hostile country all the way. 
Jack Dyer was fighting in France and wounded and in order to escape from the awfulness of trench warfare volunteered to join the Nigerian Troops fighting in German East Africa. By 1915 he was questioning the wisdom of that move as he had to march on starvation rations over the length of the country that was to become Tanganyika and later Tanzania. He was wounded for the second time and was also suffering from malaria and was sent to Nairobi to recover. There were over 100,000 casualties to our side, mainly from malaria, in this campaign.
At this time Jack would have crossed paths with Will Powys for Will too was sent back to Nairobi very ill with malaria. But they were not to meet for another 40 years when Will's daughter Rose married Jack's son Tony.

In those years Will developed the lovely farm called Kisima.
Will married Elisabeth Douglas/nee Cross who was the most perfect partner for a pioneering rancher. She had won the Military Medal for her distinguished service as a VAD in France. She came to Kenya in 1920 to develop her "Soldier Settler Farm".  But she was soon lured away by the attraction of hunting and then moved in to the hard business of ox wagon transport.  Will met Elisabeth under the most romantic circumstances when he was fortunately able to give her a pistol that had fallen from her pack when she was riding the high trail over the Aberdare range of mountains.    
Jack developed his farm called Kagia. Tony was born, the third of four sons, at Kagia in 1926 and after service in the Royal Navy joined the safari firm of Ker and Downey in 1948.  

Rose was born at Kisima in 1934 where she was brought up into a life of horses and ranch livestock. She married Tony in 1958 and they had four sons:  Michael, Francis (Fuzz), Martin and Charles.
Michael has developed Borana Lodge and Fuzz and Andy Roberts (who came to Kenya in 1956), have developed Manda Bay. Martin and Charlie continue to run the Home Farm Kisima, which is under continual development.  

Sue Roberts' father Dick Bainbridge grew up in England and had a passion for all things to do with the sea.  After  serving as a navel Officer (RNVR) during the World War II he rebuilt his beautiful old 115” wooden fruit clipper Orestes.  She had gun ports down the side, a figurehead and grass growing out of the deck, so this was no mean feat. With his sister and a few friends Dick planned to sail to South Africa to start a new life and buy a fruit farm. Several months later they arrived in Zanzibar having been attacked by pirates in the Red Sea who they fended off with a punt gun. Dick went ahead to buy a fruit farm in South Africa but instead came back with a wife!

The romance of the East African coast was too much for them and they were soon sailing to Ceylon 3000 miles across the Indian ocean to salvage 6 boats (MFV’s)  that had been sunk in Trincomalee harbor by the Admiralty at the end of the war and this was the beginning of their shipping line.

They started in Zanzibar where their first contract was transporting clove pickers to the Island and back every day, this is where their second daughter Sue was born.
Dicks wife Chim was a talented artist, cook and home maker and loved to sail.  Dick captained his ships to all the islands in the Indian ocean and they were the only regular mailboat at one time to The Seychelles, Zanzibar, the Maldives islands, Maritious and Madagascar, this was a life he loved.

The company soon grew and 20 years later Southern Line owned several oil tankers a bulk cement carrier, an air charter and travel company, and a marine engineering complex.  Dick now found himself confined to a desk and the magic was gone.  So at 52 he sold his company, bought a beautiful old wooden sailing boat and  returned to the sea where he sailed with his family for the next four years. Sue was at school in England and joined them wherever they were.

Both daughters then returned to Kenya and on her first weekend back Sue met Willie at Baringo, a place she was persuaded to visit as it was so remote in those days that she would not have the chance to visit again.  Willie aged 19 built a small lodge on one of the Islands and employed Sue to run it.  Willie has been building beautiful lodges in remote places ever since.

Willie was born in Kenya and grew up with his six siblings at Lake Baringo, a remote and beautiful part of the Rift Valley. His father David died tragically when Willie was 13. The family were faced with the prospect of leaving Kenya, but Willie was determined that this was not going to happen. After repeatedly running away from boarding school in protest, his mother Betty agreed to stay and he could help run the family business.

At 19 he built his first small lodge with a friend on one of the islands in Lake Baringo.  Sue, who grew up on the Kenyan coast, came to work here and three years later they were married. Sue and Willie built their first home on another island, Samatian, which has now been converted into a beautiful lodge by their daughter Caroline and her husband Ross.

In 1981 Willie and Sue started an arable farm in the Northern Masai Mara.  Soon realizing that the area was better suited forwildlife, Willie managed to reverse the farming trend and as a result 8,000 acres reverted to wildlife and thousands more acres were saved from the plough.   He set up an association for Masai land owners, enabling them to collect wildlife based revenue on their land.

In 2000 Willie established the Mara Conservancy in an area known as the “Mara Triangle”, with outstanding results.  Over half the area had been a “no go” area for visitors, with rampant poaching and hunting.  The area became safe for visitors and poaching stopped.  The conservancy has since become a model for conservation.

Willie then built a beautiful lodge with his brother Andy on Rusinga Island in Lake Victoria, which became an instant success.  Willie & Sue now live in Northern Kenya where they have helped secure a large portion of land that is now within the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy. It is here that they have built their newest lodge, Sirikoi.

Since he was 17 Willie has also arranged exclusive mobile safaris.  He organized his first safari to Lake Turkana in the remotest part of Northern Kenya, and with his guests has explored many wild and fascinating parts of Africa since then.

Over the past 30 years Willie has spent an enormous amount of time & energy helping to conserve wild animals, and helping communities who live with wildlife, benefit from its presence on their land. 

Michael and Nicky have lived on Borana since 1984.  In those days the property was very intensively ranched with livestock – cattle, merino sheep and angora goats, a place where wildlife took second place.
They immediately changed the management policy to a more holistic approach that has seen Borana become a wildlife refuge.

Cattle numbers have almost stayed the same, but slowly the numbers of sheep and goats were reduced to none, this happened very fast after the collapse of the merino wool market in the early 90s.  The fencing was removed and the wilderness of the land was allowed to return.
Following the collapse of the wool market Michael and Nicky decided that they had to diversify into other forms of land use.  In 1992 they persuaded the board that wildlife and tourism was the way forward and thence was the birth of Borana Lodge.
At the same Michael became a founding director of Il N’gwesi Group Ranch and helped to conceive the initial plans and funding for the fully owned community lodge there.

The Cecil family also approached the Dyers, requesting that they would like to rent a small piece of land on which to build a house and so Laragai was conceived and built by Andy Roberts. George and Lucilla Stephenson subsequently bought the house.

Over the years Michael and Nicky have worked with their neighbours to endeavour to improve their livelihoods.  The Laikipia Wildlife Forum was founded in 1994 as an organisation, which could help all landowners large and small in Laikipia to communicate and help each other on different issues from water to human-wildlife conflict.  This organisation is stronger than ever today.

After the success of Il N’gwesi, Michael and Nicky were approached by members of Lekurruki Group Ranch, who were requesting their help and support to build an eco-lodge at Tassia. This lodge is now a success that has been taken over by the Wheeler family.
Michael continues to work with the neighbouring ranchers, leasing out grazing in dry times and initiating farming strategies to improve and rehabilitate community-grazing areas.

Other projects that they have initiated are the Borana Education Support Programme, which looks after five local primary schools – helping raise money for infrastructure, teachers’ salaries, environmental programmes, and bursaries for secondary and tertiary education.  Also the Borana Mobile Clinic which is a Land Rover that covers the area of East Laikipia introducing the concept of family planning, health care and education, and HIV aids counselling as well as simple curatives and infant immunisations to those who live far from medical facilities.

Nicky runs a small natural tannery and leather workshop employing mostly physically disabled people – some blind, who work in the tanning operation.  She buys her skins off local farmers and employs local women to decorate some of the leatherwork with beads.

In 2007 Borana won the Responsible Tourism Award for Poverty Alleviation.

Caragh & Andy met whilst Andy was farming in the Mara with his brother Willy. Caragh’s Mother was guiding horseback safaris at the time in the Mara and basing the horses between safaris at the Robert’s farm. Caragh’s grandparents had moved to Kenya after 1st world war. An officer in the British Army, her grandfather put in a bid for a farm in Kenya under the Soldier Settlement Scheme as part of an effort to colonise the country. He was allocated a patch of land up on the slopes of Mount Kenya close to the Dyer ‘s Farm – Kisima.  He later decided to go into Dairy farming and move closer to Nairobi to a farm called Broomhill. His wife and young family soon followed. Caragh’s father, Peter grew up in Kenya as a small boy and was shipped off to England for his senior school years and university in Cambridge University.  He later joined the Army and met Caragh’s mother in Ireland. They were married and lived in Southern England until the outbreak of the War. After the war they bought their own farm in Kenya in a small farming area on the western side of the Great Rift Valley. Caragh’s Mother Liza, and Bimbi’s mother Chou, were best of friends.  Both families sold their farms a few years after Kenyan Independence (1963). Bimbi’s family moved to Spain and Caragh’s parents moved close-by to Broomhill.  Caragh was brought up on Broomhill in her Grandparents house. Caragh spent all her childhood years in Kenya and then to England for senior school education and a stint living in London before returning home to work. Together they roamed the country helping Willy on the farm, hosting Photographic Safaris and finally help build Rusinga Island Lodge, on the shores of Lake Victoria.

Andy & Caragh got married in December 1990 at Andy’s family home in Lake Baringo and moved to Borana Ranch, Mount Kenya, to build Laragai. Having completed the house, Andy then moved to ‘war torn’ Southern Sudan for 4 years, on contract to build roads. In 1997 Andy moved his family to join him in Uganda, where he continued with the construction business until 2000 when he sold his shares in the company and moved back to Kenya. Andy worked with Willy for another couple of years, helping with flying guests into Rusinga Island and basing the family in the Masai Mara. In 2002, Andy & Caragh moved to the coast – to a family home in Watamu on the North Coast. The Roberts and Dyers (Fuzz & Bimbi) spent many days fishing together at Watamu and the children are all of the same age and very close. Fuzz and Andy bought a fishing boat – later called Cheza, and over the next year, they actively decided to look for a new venture on the Northern Kenyan coast.  This was Manda of course, and they have successfully being running a small 16-bed lodge there since December 2003. 

Caroline, Willie & Sue's daughter, has built a small ten-bed lodge with her husband Ross Withey on Samatian Island, Lake Baringo in the Rift Valley in south-west Kenya.  This six room private island lodge is owned and hosted by Caroline and Ross and their two little boys. Caroline has always lived in unusual, out-of-the-way places: Whilst growing up, she lived on Samatian Island and in the Masai Mara, her parents being great adventurers and pioneers of new areas for tourism ventures. Ross was brought up in Limuru, a tea-growing area outside Nairobi. He was educated in Kenya before going to Seal Hayne, University of Plymouth in South England and Ball State University in Indiana USA, where he qualified in Hotel Management. Caroline and Ross took over the management of Samatian Island in 2000 and have developed it into today’s delightful, eco-friendly lodge. Ross also organizes safaris around Kenya and Tanzania, and has climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro over 20 times. Caroline and Ross were married in June 2004 at Lewa Downs in Northern Kenya. In January 2006 their son Charlie was born, followed by Danny in August 2007. Caroline and Ross are very involved in the Ruko Community Wildlife Trust (RCWT), which was formed to unite the two tribes of Rugus and Komolion area to bring peace and prosperity to their environment and communities. The Njemps and Pokot people of the eastern shores of Lake Baringo are now working hand in hand to create a sustainable future for their people, livestock, environment and wildlife.

Samatian is million miles from the hustle and bustle of traffic. It exudes a feeling of wellness and relaxation, turning the days into a myriad of changing colours and moods from the cool mornings into hot dry days with reflective stillness, whipping up into refreshing winds and stormy clouds, only to  retreat back into the depth of falling shadows and calm waters by nightfall. This is a very special place indeed. 

Willie & Sue's son Richard Roberts set up Richard's Camp in the Masai Mara which is managed by his nephew Jay Macleod and he is recently set up a smaller Camp and runs it with his partner Liz Fusco and son Willoughby.  The magnificent Masai Mara is home to the most exceptional big game viewing worldwide. Caroline's brother runs Richard's Camp, where the old traditions of settler hospitality still prevail and every need is graciously catered for. Richard’s Camp is owned and operated by Richard and his girlfriend, designer, Liz Fusco who moved to Kenya in 1993.  Richard's knowledge of the local people, the fauna and flora and the animals and birds in this amazing area of the world is inspiring, which together with Liz and a warm and welcoming staff, ensure guests a very special stay.

The stunning luxury tents have lovely built on bathrooms and are beautifully furnished. Days are filled with incredible game viewing - lion, leopard, cheetah, rhino, elephant, giraffe and zebra are abundant and are regular visitors to the camp's perimeter. Activities such as guided bush walks with Richard are not to be missed. Richard was born in Kenya and raised in the Masai Mara from the age of 3. Richard's Camp itself was originally built as the Robert's family home. Richard’s parents, Willy and Sue were instrumental in bringing together the Masai communities and forming the wildlife conservation association that exists in this area today.  From June through September the Mara plays host to one of the world’s greatest natural spectacles - the great wildebeest migration. Watch over two million head of wildebeest make their way from the Serengeti to the Mara for fresh grazing - a spectacular journey which draws all the big predators including lion, leopard and the giant Mara crocodiles. By discovering Richard's Camp, guests will have discovered one of Africa's true gems. A wonderfully warm and friendly camp with fabulous hosts, Richard's Camp mixes the perfect blend of luxury and tradition.