自我介绍

ABOUT DISTANT RELATIVES Distant Relatives is located in the ancient coastal town of Kilifi, on the coast of Kenya (midway between Mombasa and Malindi). More specifically it is squeezed between the village of Fumbini, a community-owned forest, and the beautiful emerald-blue Kilifi Creek. The project began in 2010 when, as travelers ourselves, we happened upon Kilifi and were immediately struck by its peace, beauty and relative simplicity of life. The people were welcoming and friendly, the village and town center were unintimidating and one could make friends very quickly. The natural beauty and biodiversity of the local environment was simply breathtaking. Naturally, we loved Kilifi and left begrudgingly. Since then, and after several further visits, we decided to make it our home. The name ‘Distant Relatives’ is a nod to the prevalent Kenyan practice of appropriation, but it also accurately sums up the central principle and aim of our operation: to bring people together from all around the world to learn and share with one another and build lasting, positive relationships based on an understanding and appreciation of community and sustainability – we are all Distant Relatives! An excellent environmental management system is obviously central to this project. We placed much emphasis on the responsible management of waste and resources by promoting and applying at all times the ‘Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle’ philosophy to preserve natural resources, landfill space, emissions, and energy. Organic waste is composted or fed to pigs, chickens, ducks, guinea fowls and guinea pigs. Grey water from sinks and showers are used for watering banana, papaya and passion fruit gardens. Plastic bottles are reused or recycled and all metal is collected by scrap metal dealers who give the metal a second life. Our 500 square meter roof surface allows us to collect vast amounts of rainwater for our showers, kitchens and swimming pool. All the wood used for furniture is either up-cycled from old shattered boats, driftwood, or from non-native and/or invasive species. We are also very pleased with the compost toilet system in place which allows the garden to become more fertile every day – the system works amazingly well, receives much positive feedback and many people have often asked us if we could help them build similar ones for their houses and NGO’s. In terms of construction, we have tried to use a combination of local and traditional Swahili designs, whilst trying to reduce all possible impacts on the environment – we have built our rooms around old-grown trees, we have minimized the use of cement to the maximum, banned the use of mangrove wood as beautiful as it might be … etc. We only use LED and energy-saving lighting. We have up-cycled hundreds and hundreds of car and truck tyres as retaining walls (saved from open burning in town) and used hundreds of glass bottles collected from restaurants for building and also for our pathway light shades and soon for the glasses at the bar (once we master the art of glass cutting and sanding!) We hope to install further green technologies and systems such as a full solar power system, but they are very costly investments… We would like start producing biogas from organic waste by then of the year. We were very pleased to have obtained our first official certification from the Ecotourism Society of Kenya (ESOK) within just one year of operation! We are also partnering with like-minded companies such as Wild Living, an organization committed to working on sustainability projects resulting in the generation of sustainable incomes for local communities. We are pleased that Distant Relatives has already become a central meeting point for all the backpackers visiting Kenya’s coast, as well as for those with an interest in alternative and more sustainable and conscious living lifestyles. Feel free to browse the rest of our website or email us if you have any questions about who we are and why we do what we do! ABOUT THE OWNERS Together with a group of friends Tom and Romain travelled from Ethiopia down to Cape Town and fell in love with Kilifi on the way, and decided to come back and set up this little paradise! Tom is originally from Zimbabwe, lived many years South Africa and also in Australia where he completed an MSc in Community Development. Romain is from France, lived some years in the US, Ireland, South Africa and Australia where he completed an MSc in Marine Biology and Natural Resource Management. Distant Relatives is 100% owner-managed. *Kindly note that at the moment, we're having a challenge with our swimming pool which has a big leak in it, so are planning to do a repair in approximately one month, but we are not able to be filling it anymore due to the lack of water available in Kilifi as well as the high financial (majorly) and environmental impact of doing this by water lorries, which would cost us approximately a thousand dollars a week. We would still be very happy to welcome you, but want to be clear about this current challenge to avoid disappointment during your stay! Therefore, if you would like to still book with us, we're very happy to have you and we will offer you a 20% discount due to the lack of swimming pool at this time!*