Did I catch Covid from a naked-rumped tomb bat?

Until I promised to slaughter a fat-tailed sheep with a goat thrown in for a feast, the farm cowhands looked doubtful about going for their vaccinations. ‘Come on, it won’t hurt you,’ I cajoled. A panther-like man I’ve seen pursuing bandits with a rifle and reckless courage announced that he was frightened. The others nodded and rubbed their left arms. But at the offer of meat and sizzling fat over an open fire, everybody cheered up.

Time was running short. A village clinic two hours away in Maasai country had phoned to say its supply of doses was sitting there unused and would I urgently muster some people? Vaccine supplies were being distributed to the deserts, jungles and highlands of the country more efficiently than in, say, France or Germany — but north of Mount Kenya I’d heard some local people were less than keen. Take honey instead, they advised. I did not get to the bottom of why some feared the jab, but I heard some conspiracy theories about impotence.

For weeks I had stayed very alone on the farm, having only long-distance conversations in the open. This is because I came down with the virus myself. It made no sense to me, since I live almost entirely outdoors and even in normal times rarely catch sight of a human unless he’s herding cattle on the horizon. In the past year there’s been much talk of zoonosis. I wondered if I’d got it off one of the bats that hang on the veranda beams outside the bedroom. Kenya has more bat species than anywhere in the world — over 100 of them, from hammer-headed fruit bats, to hairy slit-faced bats. Perhaps I got it from a naked-rumped tomb bat. I wondered if my cattle can get Covid. Or elephants and lions.