Laikipia
Our farmhouse is at the finishing stage and Wachira, the electrician from Large Power and Control, is advising me on aesthetics. ‘A spotlight in the garden is a beauteous thing to behold,’ he urges. I reply, ‘Fine, but can we talk about house lighting first?’ ‘Yes, but we must illuminate the garden path in a way to be admired.’ ‘No spotlight,’ I say firmly.
After three years in tents and having spent a fortune we still have not moved into the house. Our Kenyan farm is a white elephant leaning on my chest. The way we have spent money causes me to have ghastly visions of wrist slashing, serious illness without insurance, falling towers and a runaway crack-cocaine addiction. We have constructed a railway that emerges from and goes nowhere in the jungle.
At this instant, the water boiler — an old oil drum modified to be heated over a wood fire — ruptures with an explosive hiss of steam.
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