They call him Arch.
I thought it was short
for Archibald.

Tirop arrived a few minutes past six with a cup of tea.

He had driven from Nairobi in the dark to be here by sunrise. This is not the first time. Our first site visit together was on Christmas Eve — before a single stone had been laid, before the ground had been broken, before any of this was real. He showed up then too. Early, tea in hand, ready to walk ground that was still just ground.

Some people show you who they are in how they show up. Tirop has shown up early every time.

He comes from the Eldoret tea highlands, proper tea people. My father-in-law would get along with him immediately. The two of them could spend an entire afternoon on tea leaves and neither would notice the time passing. My father-in-law swears by tea from Imenti, the highlands of Meru. A friend of his once travelled to Scotland for the first time, saw the highlands and said "huku ni wapi kunakaa Meru." Anywhere beautiful is Meru. Anything good comes from there. To the tea. Back to Tirop.

He walked up the steps onto the site and stood there for a moment. It had been a while since he was last here — after the setout, after the ground floor slab. The build had moved on without him watching it daily and now he was back to see what it had become. He moved the way he always moves on site: deliberately, checking everything before saying anything.

Tirop is our architect. They call him Arch — short for architect, the way a doctor is called Dr.

I spent the first few weeks thinking his name was Archibald. Like from the movies. I thought his parents had simply been ahead of their time naming their son Arch. The way these days kids have fancy names. When I found out what it means, Tirop was right there. He laughed — not loudly, not at my expense, just that quiet humble laugh of someone who is thinking maybe he should have kept the ruse going a little longer.

Tirop has worked on some of the most recognised projects in the Nairobi skyline including 88 Nairobi Condominiums. He was introduced to us by Tim, my brother-in-law — one of the better decisions Tim has made on my behalf. His patience in understanding what we wanted Lava & Lake to be, harbouring all our first-time builder questions, showing us what was possible, never once making us feel like we didn't know what we were doing even when we didn't — is something I do not take for granted.

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Getting Tirop on this project was not obvious.

I called and called after the introduction from Tim. Our calendars never synced — his schedule, his other projects, the gap between wanting a meeting and actually having one. When we finally sat down in his office he had already done his homework. Tim had told him I love coffee. So Tirop had gone out of his way to get Rwandan beans from the Kigezi region, brewed fresh, waiting on the desk when I arrived.

I have read Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. I take negotiation like a game — Makena tells me I do it even to the mama mboga for cabbages. But that day, in that office, with that coffee, I did not budge as much as I normally would. Maybe it was the beans. Maybe Tirop had read the same book. What I know is I got an architect who understood the dream before the drawings started.

It took a few more meetings before it landed — before he understood not just what we wanted to build but why. We came to those early meetings like first-time parents at a hospital: every question asked twice, every decision second-guessed, every detail examined like it was the only detail that mattered. Tirop never made us feel foolish for that. He answered every question. He showed us what was possible. He took all of it — the excess, the questions, the changes of mind — and turned it into drawings.

The team laying up for the pour

That morning he started with the bedrooms.

We want to swap the side doors to windows — the front folding doors already face the view and the bedroom does not need two openings competing with each other. Tirop looked at it and said "I told you so." He had told us. He was right. We moved on.

Then we went up to the first floor where the slab would be poured the next day.

He stood there and looked at the view before he looked at anything else. Just for a moment — the lake, the ridge, the morning light. Then he pulled out his phone, checked the drawings, and started. "Where are the spacers?" "Add more steel here." "Check the parapet dimensions." He walked the plank from end to end, balancing, checking the weight of the steel beneath him, moving with the confidence of someone for whom the plank is not a risk.

I walked next to him. I was pretending to look for the same things he was looking for. Asking questions, nodding, trying to read what he was reading in the structure. In my mind the spacers were vague — I could see them but I could not tell what was right or wrong about them until he pointed. That is the gap between knowing something exists and knowing what it should be. Tirop lives on the right side of that gap. I am learning to cross it.

Kioko, our electrician, was interjecting about where the conduits should go for solar, how to place them, each person adding to what the last one said. The foreman was there. Edgah was there. All of them huddling around one problem, pulling it apart, putting it back together better than it was.

Tirop was with us for two hours. He left a few minutes after eight to start his drive back to Nairobi, another client waiting. I watched him go and thought about what it means to have someone like that on your side.

I caught the sunrise alone that morning.

The formwork was done. The wires were set. The team was still waking up. I walked up and stood on the structure and looked out — and the lake was more vivid than I had ever seen it. Not a glimpse, not a sliver. The full lake, drawing you in, the kind of view that makes the thing you are building feel real for the first time. Before this I had been seeing pieces of it. Now I could see all of it.

I wanted to record it. I put the camera down instead.

We had paid more than projected to get this view.

There was a point where the costs came in higher than expected and we asked the question every builder asks — where do we pull back? The answer, every time, was nowhere. Not on this. The whole point of Lava & Lake is an unobstructed view of Lake Naivasha from above. You do not build a resort on a volcanic ridge and then compromise on what the ridge is for.

So we did not compromise. The costs went where they needed to go. Standing there at sunrise, looking at the lake more clearly than I ever had, I understood every shilling of it.

The next morning we arrived at eight.

The slab crew had just arrived. Before anything else — tea and mandazi. All of them, together, fuelling up for what the day was going to ask of them. Then the harbour mixer. Then the machine to pull the mixture. Then they started.

Kioko spent his entire time on the slab. The same man who had kept us waiting 45 minutes the morning before was moving wheelbarrows during the pour, making sure his conduits were in place, not leaving until everything was right. Something had told me to wait for him. I was glad I waited.

The symmetry of the team pouring, vibrating, mixing was the same symphony I had seen at the ground floor slab. They knew what to do. Nobody needed to be told twice. I stood at the edge and felt the same awe I always feel watching people who know their work do it without flinching.

When they finished I looked out at the view. The slab was done. The first floor was done. And the view — the view we had paid more than projected for, the view we had refused to compromise on — was right there, exactly as we had imagined it. Lake Naivasha, unobstructed, from above.

T-21 days until the slab is safe. Three months until we open.

Before I could send the photo, Tirop had already texted.

"Just checking in — how did the pour go?"

He had not seen the photo, had not heard from anyone on site. He just knew it was the day and he wanted to know. Sam called too, a little later, asking the same thing. Two people with nothing to gain from the outcome except the satisfaction of knowing it went well.

I think about that more than I expected to.

This is my first build. I don't know if every project comes with people like this — people who are not just doing a job, not watching the clock or counting the invoice, who are genuinely invested in whether this thing works. Maybe it is luck. Maybe it is the project. I do not know. What I know is I do not take it for granted.

When the team came down and cleaned up we took a picture.

Not a celebration. A thanksgiving. They reminded me, as they always do, that I owe them a mbuzi. I made that promise after the ground floor slab. They collected it after the first floor. I told them yes — but not yet. The people who made this happen need to be in the room when it is honoured. They first asked on Good Friday. I am a Christian. Good Friday is not the day for a mbuzi. The 2nd of May — the day after Labour Day. Let them rest first. Then we eat.

Next issue: 21 days and counting. The slab cures, the walls close in, and we start to see if what we imagined looks anything like what we built.

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