People ask us this all the time. The name. The products. The obsession with getting children excited about safari before they even arrive in Kenya. Zizibow is a brand with a story – and it’s a good one.
The origin story: how Zizibow was born from a gap in the market
We launched Zizibow in 2022, and it grew out of something we kept bumping into as a family safari company: there was nowhere genuinely good to send a family before they travelled, or to point a child towards once they landed, that actually understood Kenya rather than just slapping a giraffe on a mug. Beautiful safari merchandise existed. Products that supported the charities and communities we actually work with on the ground did not, not in one place, not done well. So we built it ourselves – a one-stop shop to support the causes close to our heart and to produce genuinely lovely, Kenyan-designed safari merchandise at the same time.
What Zizibow stands for: education, adventure, sustainability
Every product has to earn its place against three things. Does it teach a child something real about Kenya – its wildlife, its geography, its culture – rather than just a generic safari cliche? Does it get them genuinely excited for the adventure ahead, not just occupied for ten minutes? And does making and selling it do some good, whether that’s supporting a women’s group’s livelihood or simply being something built to last rather than land in a bin after one trip? If a product doesn’t clear all three, it doesn’t become a Zizibow product.
The products and the philosophy behind each one
The range spans Kenyan-designed children’s books and safari books, jigsaw puzzles, activity and occasion cards, travel mugs, maps, plushies and adventure-ready bags. A good example of the philosophy in action: our wildlife jigsaw puzzles are illustrated by real Kenyan artists – Philip Shaw’s energetic wildlife scenes among them – rather than generic stock art, and our 47-counties-of-Kenya puzzle teaches geography rather than just keeping small hands busy. The beaded bracelets are handmade by the Ushindi Women’s Group in the Great Rift Valley – every purchase is a direct line to a real woman’s income, not a vague ‘gives back’ sticker on the packaging.
The Let’s Go On Safari book: how it came to be
This is the one people ask about most. Let’s Go On Safari is our 32-page entertainment book, built for children roughly five to eighteen, and it exists because every single family we’ve ever sent on safari has asked some version of the same question: what do we actually give the kids to do on the long drives between camps? Colouring pages weren’t enough on their own, and a straight quiz book felt like homework. So we built something that mixes checklists, activities, colouring and real Kenyan wildlife facts into one book that works whether you’re four hours into a transfer or curled up on the veranda before bed. It’s become the thing we hand every family before they travel with us, and increasingly, the thing other operators and lodges hand theirs too.
Who uses Zizibow: families, lodges, tour operators, teachers
Families are the obvious one, but they’re far from the only ones. Camps and lodges stock the book and puzzles in their own shops so guests can pick one up on arrival rather than only in advance. Other tour operators buy in bulk for their own guests, because good pre-trip material for kids is hard to find and nobody wants to reinvent it. And we’ve had a genuinely lovely response from teachers organising school safari trips, who use the book as an actual pre-departure learning tool rather than pure entertainment. It’s grown well beyond ‘thing we hand our own clients’ into something the wider Kenyan safari industry leans on.
Where to find Zizibow in Kenya and internationally
On the ground, you’ll find Zizibow on the shelves at a genuinely broad spread of properties across the country – Fairmont Mount Kenya Safari Club, Moon’s Camp, Northern Nomad at the Nanyuki airstrip, Ol Pejeta Bush Camp, Sweetwaters Serena on Ol Pejeta, camps in Samburu, Sarova Shaba, right down to the coast at Sarova Whitesands in Mombasa, Hob House in Malindi, Manda Bay in Lamu, and Turtle Bay and the Watamu Snake Farm in Watamu. For now our physical shelves are entirely Kenya-based, but the shop ships internationally – so however far you’re travelling from to get here, you can have the book in your child’s hands before you’ve even boarded.
Browse the Zizibow shop zizibow.com →
