For most people, success means big houses, fast cars, and a life that looks perfect from the outside. For 42-year-old Tim Booker, that life was real.
He was a wealthy entrepreneur living in Washington DC, with businesses spread across different countries and a lifestyle that many dream about.
However, behind all his achievements was a quiet ache that money never healed.
Tim’s journey to Kenya started as a simple visit. A relative invited him to support a nonprofit program in the country, and he agreed without thinking too much of it.
When he arrived in Machakos, everything shifted.
It wasn’t the scenery that captured him first. It was the people, strangers who treated him like they’d known him forever.
The calm, unhurried days. The sense that life didn’t always have to be a race.
He says that standing there, surrounded by people he’d just met, he felt something he hadn’t felt in years: peace.
What was supposed to be a short trip stretched into several weeks.
As he spent time in Kenya, Tim felt a strange certainty growing inside him; something about this place felt right.
The more he explored, the more he read, the more he talked to people, the more he felt like he had finally found what he didn’t even know he was searching for.
He made a decision that shocked even him: he left the United States and moved to Nairobi.
Today, Tim lives in a quiet, leafy neighborhood in a fully furnished four-bedroom home. It costs KSh 450,000 a month, including security, a housekeeper, and utilities.
But for him, it’s not the size of the house that matters; it’s the feeling it gives him. One thing Tim loves to point out is how sharp, creative, and intelligent Kenyans are.
“I thought I was smart. But I’ve met people here who really impressed me,” he said.
From his neighbors who drop by just to check on him, to children who wave at him as he takes his morning walks, Tim says Kenya has a warmth that feels rare.
Tim spent years in the US achieving everything he thought he needed. But there was always a quiet emptiness, a restlessness he could not explain.
“In America, I had success. But I didn’t have peace,” he said.
In Kenya, even on normal days, he feels grounded. He still runs his overseas businesses, but his heart is here.
On weekends, he volunteers with the same nonprofit that first brought him to Kenya, a way of giving back to the country that changed him.
For Tim, Kenya is no longer a place he visits. It’s the place he calls home.
