The Move Was the Easy Part: What Happened When I Found Myself Truly Alone in Kenya

Moving to Kenya | Living abroad alone | Expat life Kenya | How to move abroad

I did not move to Kenya alone. I want to be honest about that from the start, because the version of this story that begins with a single woman boarding a plane for Nairobi with nothing but courage and a camera is not my story, and I am tired of the dishonesty in so much expat narrative.

I moved to Kenya with my husband. He is Kenyan. The logistics that defeat most people who consider the move - the visas, the networks, the understanding of how things work, the knowledge of which neighbourhood is which and who to call when the electricity goes - these were not my obstacles. I had a guide, a partner, a family structure into which I arrived already embedded.

The move itself was, genuinely, relatively smooth.

What was not smooth came a year and a half later.

When the Ground Shifts

We divorced.

I will not go into detail about why, because the reasons are private and belong to both of us. What matters for this account is the position it left me in: alone, in a country that was not my own, in a place I had been navigating with someone else's help, separated from the support structures that had made the move manageable in the first place.

The first weeks after the separation were some of the hardest of my life. Not because Kenya was hostile, it was not. Kenya is a country with warmth and community and extraordinary people. But the specific aloneness of being a foreign national without your usual support network, building everything from scratch in a place where the systems and social codes are different from the ones you grew up with, is a particular kind of challenge.

I considered going home. More than once. I sat with that option seriously and honestly, working out what it would mean practically, what it would mean for the work I had built, what it would mean for the person I was becoming in this place.

I stayed.

What Staying Required

The first thing it required was practical. I had to understand things that had been handled by or with my husband, aspects of life in Kenya that I had been insulated from by the partnership structure. Banking. Vehicle maintenance. The particular negotiations that are part of daily life in a city where things work differently than in Europe or North America. I learned these things, all of them, and it was not always graceful, but it happened.

The second thing staying required was community. I had acquaintances in Nairobi, people I had met through my husband's networks, through the photography world, through the early months of building a life here. After the divorce, some of those connections went quiet in ways that stung. Others deepened unexpectedly. New ones appeared through the simple act of showing up to things alone and allowing people in.

Building community as a solo adult in a foreign country is work. It does not happen by itself. It requires a willingness to be the person who reaches out first, who accepts invitations to things where you know nobody, who shows up to the photography collective or the running group or the supper club and tries again after the evenings that do not lead anywhere.

I am not naturally a joiner. I had to become one.

The third thing staying required was an honest reckoning with why I was here. Stripped of the context of a partnership, the question became very simple: is this place, this landscape, this work, worth the difficulty of doing it alone? I spent several months with that question. The answer was yes. Unambiguously, and with increasing certainty.

What Came From It

I am glad I stayed. Not despite the difficulty but, in some meaningful sense, because of it. The version of myself that exists now, the photographer, the naturalist, the person who has navigated Kenya on my own terms and built something here that is genuinely mine, only exists because of the hard period that preceded it.

This is not a redemptive narrative designed to make the hardship sound worth it. It was worth it. But I also know that it might not have been, and I stayed without knowing whether it would be. That is what courage actually looks like, not the bold, photogenic kind, but the stubborn, unglamorous kind, where you just keep going because going back feels wrong.

The photography changed during this period. It deepened. Time spent alone in the bush, which became much more frequent when I no longer had a partner to account for, changed my relationship with the landscape in ways I did not anticipate. Sitting alone in a vehicle with a predator in front of me, in the silence of early morning in the Mara, became a practice of presence that I leaned on heavily during the difficult months. The animals do not know about your divorce. The bush does not care. That indifference, paradoxically, was a comfort.

What I Would Tell Someone Considering a Similar Move

Be honest about what the decision actually is. If you are moving to a new country with a partner who has networks and knowledge in that country, you are not taking the same leap as someone who arrives alone. That is fine, it is the move I made and I do not regret it. But know what kind of support you are relying on and have a clear-eyed answer for the question of what happens if that support changes.

Build independent community from the beginning. Not as a contingency plan, but because a life that depends entirely on a single person's social network is fragile for anyone, regardless of geography. Find your own people, your own places, your own rhythms in the city. These are worth having for their own sake and they matter enormously if circumstances change.

And if circumstances do change, if the ground shifts in ways you did not plan for, the question of whether to stay or go is worth asking honestly and without drama. Sometimes going home is the right answer. For me it was not. But that answer had to come from an honest assessment of the actual situation, not from pride or from the narrative I had constructed about who I was.

Kenya gave me more than I could have anticipated. Some of what it gave me came from the hardest period of my life here. That is how it is, sometimes, with the places that matter most.

Practical Resources

For anyone seriously considering a move to Kenya, whether with a partner, with family, or alone, my Living in Kenya as an Expat guide covers the practical realities: visas, neighbourhoods, healthcare, driving, banking, schools, and the social landscape of Nairobi as a foreign national. How to Get the Confidence to Move Abroad addresses the deeper questions: how to assess whether a move is right for you, how to prepare practically and emotionally, and how to build a life that is genuinely yours in a new place.