Laikipia
I don’t usually observe Lent, but this year it crept up on me. The penances just happened. I’m not even a good Christian. But, let me tell you, this is way, way beyond giving up the Mars Bars for a few weeks. First, the hair: the weekend after Ash Wednesday I went shooting pigeons in Suffolk with my friend Sam Kiley. At the time I had long locks (not through vanity, I promise, but rather neglect of what GQ magazine calls ‘grooming’). When I told Sam I was off to Afghanistan in April, he urged me to have a short back and sides. Otherwise, he said, if the Taliban kidnapped me they’d find me pretty and bugger me senseless. He doesn’t mince his words, old Sam. And he doesn’t have a hair on his head. We found some clippers and he gave me a severe ‘jarhead’ buzz cut.
I had gone to Britain in February hoping to wangle some money out of my publishers — or, as I said rather grandly, ‘do some business’. ‘Grrrreeeat to see you,’ they said. ‘We love you!’ they said. But my Bata veldskoens were still falling off my feet as I stepped on to the flight home to Kenya on St David’s Day.
From Nairobi I travelled to the northern Chalbi desert to stay among the Gabra nomads, about whom I am writing. The Chalbi is about as 40 days and 40 nights as you can get. On the second Sunday in Lent I arrived at the singing wells of Belesa, where I slept wrapped in a cowhide on the ground beneath the stars. By day I was blasted by sand and wind, poured sweat and rationed my water so I wouldn’t have to drink dromedary-spit from the troughs.
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