Weekends are for reset

By Emma Mbuthia 3/5/2026

Weekends are for reset. And this one stretched just enough to remind me why we leave the city.

Magical Kenya.

This time, we tried to kill two birds with one stone but ended up doing something better. We went further. That's the thing with intention: when it's clear, it stretches your reach.

One of the reasons I keep traveling with Trek sports and Adventures is simple; I don't have to choose between work, wellness, and motherhood. The itinerary is built like a system. Sightseeing, structured activities, child-friendly stops. I carry my girls with me, not as an afterthought, but as part of the design.

That matters. Because too many of us are still operating on loyalty. Adjusting our lives around broken systems instead of demanding better ones.

We drove into Tsavo with one thing on the checklist: a proper game drive. If you've been following this series, you already know Tsavo's history isn't soft. The "Man-Eaters of Tsavo" weren't fiction. They were a disruption. Devouring the very workers building the railway. The irony? The same people sent to build systems of connection became casualties of a system not yet fully formed.

There's a lesson there. Half-built systems don't just fail. They consume. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Most of our corporate onboarding is still out here eating people.

Tsavo West is vast. Rough. Honest. About 9,000 square kilometres of road network cutting through wild terrain. Not the curated, almost-urban feel of Nairobi National Park. Here, you smell the earth before you see the animals.

First stop: Mashetani Lava Flow. Mashetani is loosely translated to demonic. When lava poured from the Chyulu Hills, it tore through the land, hot and unstoppable. Today it's cooled. Quiet. Almost inviting.

We walked barefoot. The modern world calls it earthing. The older communities called it healing. Different language, same instinct; reconnect to something real.

Some of us need a lava field to finally log off.

Next stop: Mzima Springs. This isn't just a scenic stop. It's a system. Mzima Springs feeds clean water toward the coast. What you see is clarity; water so pure you can watch fish glide across the bottom like glass. What you don't see is the structure underneath: filtration through volcanic rock, underground flow, pressure, consistency.

Nature doesn't rely on loyalty. It builds systems that work. Quietly, without a memo, without a motivational speaker, without a "team-building" afternoon that achieves nothing except nyama choma.

Then the game drive. The giraffes here aren't your typical Maasai giraffes. These are reticulated giraffes; clean geometric patterns, almost like someone drew them with intention. Precision in the wild.

The elephants? Red. Not by birth, but by environment. Coated in Tsavo's iron-rich soil. Same species. Different outcome.

Environment shapes identity. HR, are you taking notes?

At the watering hole, everything converges; buffalo, zebra, giraffe, even the eland, easily mistaken for a wildebeest if you're not paying attention. No chaos. No confusion. No one waiting for the minutes of the last meeting to be circulated.

Just order.

The elephants move as a system. Young ones at the center, adults forming a protective ring. No debate. No town halls. No "let's take this offline." Just instinct, aligned to survival.

And somewhere between watching those herds and listening to my girls ask questions, something clicked.

Animals don't "figure it out later." They are raised into systems that prepare them to survive.

We, on the other hand, rely heavily on loyalty. "Be a good child." "Respect authority." "Figure it out when you grow up." Then we release our children into a marketplace that rewards structure, not sentiment. And we're surprised when they struggle.

Back in Nairobi, the rains have been relentless. Roads flooded. Systems exposed.

You drive through water not knowing whether it's a puddle or a career-limiting pothole. I almost got "Bermuda-ed" saved only by following a bus. Corporate Kenya survival tip: when in doubt, outsource your decision-making to a matatu driver. Those ones have seen things. They have navigated roundabouts with no lane markings, traffic police with unclear instructions, and potholes that have swallowed ambitions. They are, in their own way, a system.

But that's exactly the point.

We shouldn't have to rely on luck, instinct, or whoever is two car-lengths ahead of us.

We should rely on systems. So here's the uncomfortable question: Are we raising children for loyalty or for systems?

Because Tsavo made one thing very clear. Survival, growth, and continuity are never left to chance. They are designed.

And until we start designing in our homes, our workplaces, our institutions. We will keep producing people who are loyal to things that were never built to protect them.

The animals figured this out long before KRA introduced iTax. No extensions. No last-minute panic. Just structure. Meanwhile, we’re about sixty days short to filing and already negotiating with deadlines 🙂