Travel writer, 'Mother of Cows' forges long-term connections between TC and Kenya

TRAVERSE CITY — To her friends in northern Michigan, she’s Kim Schneider. But in a village near Aitong in Kenya’s Maasai Mara, they call her “Noongishu” — Mother of Cows — a name bestowed after a simple water system helped end typhoid and changed daily life for a community Schneider had only just met.

This is the story of how a global pandemic grounded a travel writer, but in that pause sparked connections that grew into Uplift Travel.