Green Heart Kilifi

A walk through Green Heart

Life at
Green Heart

A single green day on the Kilifi headland — hand-drawn, and in no hurry to end.

the story begins

Takaungu-style creek at dawn: a fisherman wades near a wooden canoe between forested coral cliffs

low tide · the creek

The corridor opens onto the creek.

Low water, and the creek lies bare. A fisherman walks his line past the sandbar; a crab works the wet sand.

Hand-illustrated map of Green Heart Kilifi — the green headland between the creek and the reef, with the village, EcoHub, FoMo and the baobab fields

Beneath the Baobabs

The Green Corridor

Homes at Tuli Gardens

The Food Movement

Compass rose

the headland

Seven hundred acres between creek and reef.

Forest, farms and a village you can cross barefoot. Nothing in this story is more than a short walk away. Illustrative map.

The EcoHub village square: a timber-and-coral building wrapped in greenery beside a baobab

afternoon · the eco hub

By afternoon, the heart of it all.

Warm windows, open doors, neighbours under the baobab — the EcoHub, humming softly into the evening.

the green corridor

You walk in under the trees, and learn their names.

Mango tree heavy with fruit — Mwembe · mango
Shade first, fruit in December.

A family of baobab trees — Mbuyu · baobab
Older than any map of this coast.

Neem tree — Mwarubaini · neem
Forty cures in one tree — so the name says.

Sisal in bloom, its flower spike twenty feet tall — Mkonge · sisal
Waits years, then blooms once — twenty feet tall.

Great fig tree with hanging roots — Mkuyu · wild fig
The tree the birds argue over.

Sketch of a cob villa with roof terrace, plunge pool and succulent garden

and home

And, at last, home.

Cob walls holding the day's cool; the little pool holding the last of the sky.

A bar built around an old Land Rover beneath a huge fig tree, with a carved marlin in the branches

you set out · the tree bar

It begins at the tree bar.

An old Land Rover, the first coffee of the day, the great fig arching overhead. From here, you walk.

A rope suspension bridge running above the forest canopy toward a glowing baobab at sunset along the Green Corridor

evening · beneath the baobabs

Back up through the trees, to the baobabs.

Out along the bridge as the lanterns come on, the great baobab glowing over the forest.

nightfall · under the mbuyu

The creek goes quiet.
The stars don’t.

This is life at Green Heart — one ordinary, unrepeatable day of it.

Explore the EcoHub

Illustrations drawn for Green Heart Kilifi · all scenes are artistic impressions of a place under way.

click or press → to move · space to pause