Where the kids play with spears – and kitesurf

Di Melesi at work on safari

Di Melesi, who works for Ker & Downey, “the world’s oldest safari company” that was established in 1946, left Scotland for Kenya when she was 10 years old. She still remembers, with a shudder, “going home from school at 3.30pm in the dark, shivering at windy bus stops”. “We were forced to play hockey or lacrosse in short skirts, whatever the weather. Our little white legs would go blue and, after a shower, my wet hair would freeze solid.”

Although she has lived in Kenya for most of her life, Melesi, 47, is still an expat. “I’m entitled to Kenyan citizenship but would have to renounce my British citizenship and passport in order to get it,” she says. “To travel on a Kenyan passport is a hassle, as you have to get visas for every country you go to.”

This would cause problems for Melesi who, with her husband, Tim, a second-generation Kenyan, regularly travels throughout the US and Europe. Their two children, with suitably Scottish names, Max, 19, and Angus, 16, also have British passports, although they were born in Kenya. When they were little, the children played with Maasai friends, practising spear throwing.

When she is not camped on the slopes of Kilimanjaro or in the Mara with clients of her safari company, Melesi divides her time between her family’s two homes. One is the converted stables of an upmarket town house in Nairobi that was once the farm of author Karen Blixen, a “privileged residential area”. The other is her beach house.

This new coastal house, an hour’s flight or a seven-hour drive away, Melesi loves most. It was completed last year, “after many years of longing to have somewhere to retreat to from Nairobi with its urban sprawl and increasing amounts of traffic and security issues,” she says.

Zebras graze in the Maasai Mara, far from Melesi's childhood memories of Scottish winters

The Kenyan coast, meanwhile, has always signified relaxation and innocence for the family. For Melesi, it still does, despite the kidnap and murder of two British tourists from Kiwayu Safari Village last month, and other similar incidents. These shocking events took place hundreds of miles away, she explains. “It doesn’t affect my feelings about our beach house as we don’t live anywhere near the Somali border,” she says. “It would be like not wanting to live in Edinburgh because of attacks on the Underground in London.”

Her beach house is a communal home that she shares with her sister Shirley and family.

The courtyard home in Watamu, 20km south of Malindi, echoes the local vernacular. “It’s simple and symmetrical, built from raw coral blocks and coconut wood, a large and uncluttered space in which our two families can be together but not too together,” she says. They built it themselves for less than £125,000, including land, “but land prices and materials have soared since,” says Melesi. Nicknamed the “Hot Plot”, there are four-metre high ceilings that ensure it is always cool, white walls, decorative niches, rough pole beams in ceilings and large living areas with built-in concrete barazas – traditional Swahili sitting areas – scattered with cushions. “The word baraza means to have a conversation or a meeting. In coastal towns such as Lamu, you will find people sitting on the barazas outside their houses drinking coffee together,” explains Melesi. There is no glass in the windows but there are hand-carved wooden shutters and doors, made by local craftsmen. Most of the construction was done using local tools. “There were no jackhammers,” says Melesi. “But there were up to 100 men at any one time, working with primitive tools in the baking sun.”

On the makuti thatched roof are photovoltaic solar panels to supplement intermittent mains power. As mains water supply is not reliable, rainwater is collected from the roof and stored in a 100,000 litre tank. There is no television and no landline but there is mobile phone reception and mobile broadband, as well as a swimming pool a short walk from the Indian Ocean.

The sisters’ two eldest sons, Max and Oliver, 22, now run a kitesurfing school with another friend, Xan Woods. The villagers are already familiar with tourists and expatriates, explains Melesi.

“Most are involved with the tourist industry on some level, be it through the hotels, water sports, deep sea fishing or local fishermen bringing their daily catch to the door.” Perhaps because of this, the family has experienced no problems settling in. “The local community is very friendly and accepting of our lifestyle,” she says.

Although their life is busier than people in the local community, it is “far less frenetic than that of people in the western world”. And certainly a world away from Melesi’s early childhood in Scotland and the “awful weather and dark days of winter.”

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Buying guide

Pros

● Great weather

● Spectacular wildlife

● Wonderful beaches

Cons

● Security

● High school fees with no option for state education

● Minimal public transport

What you can buy for ...

£100,000 A three-bedroom apartment with communal swimming pool and garden in Kileleshwa, close to Nairobi’s central business district

£1m A spacious seafront villa with swimming pool in Watamu

Contact

Knight Frank Kenya, www.knightfrank.co.ke, tel: +254 20 423 9000