Random Drift Project

Like anyone else, I was pretty annoyed with my dad from time to time. He had a tendency to be distant, self-occupied and horrible at family communications. Then I woke up one day, with frantic eyes and dry mouth, realizing I had become him. Genetics really brought it’s A-game in our case, but can DNA really be this powerful, I asked myself as I wandered thru my study and garage - noticing how I’d bought, collected and worshipped the same things over the course of my life - as he did in his. Not just similar things, sometimes our gear have a spooky exactness to them. He’s dead now, but oh is he alive. In me, and quite possibly my children. 


One of the many things my dad presented us with, was the opportunity to spend a few years in Kenya. As an academic, geologist, teacher and scientist - he was selected among 12 other Swedish families, to start and build the Kenya Teachers Science College (KSTC), which still to this day is part of the University of Nairobi. My two older sisters went to school, but I was so little I spent the days with my aya Martha, and our gardener Paul. For five years the East African outback was our playground, with countless tent nights and miles with the Land Rover. It really shaped us, as a family.


Scientist, father, husband and influencer PO Nordell

Cut to August 2021. Our two oldest kids, Frank and Nike, get on a flight to spend a year at the Swedish School in Nairobi. Right across Ngong Rd, where I lived with my family as a child - in House 34 in the university campus. They love it, and I am so happy they get infused with such an adventure - together.


So as we went through box after box with my father’s old black and white captures from the late 60’s and early 70’s, the idea of a road trip came to life. So while my kids are boarded up at high school in Nairobi, my wife running wild with her career in Stockholm and youngest daugher crushing it in 6th grade - I will roam around southern and eastern Africa. Solo, living out of my car, and capturing whatever I come across. 


The concept going forward is ’Random Drift Project’. What’s life anyway, but a fun, unexpected series of amazing events? 


What I’ll be driving? A Land Rover. 

1
Using Format