Waiting for the rain that never comes – and for the elections to be over

Kenya

After two years of no rain, all colour has drained from the landscape on the farm so that by the time we boarded the bush plane to leave in the bright sun it was as if we were all snow blind. From the air the highlands were waterless and dead until we descended over Kenya’s north shore and the world went green. My late mother’s garden at the beach house swirls with bougainvillea, gardenia, frangipani and allamanda. Green ingots of baobab leaves hang wetly down over green grass and wild flowers which spill down to the high tide mark.

We walk among clouds of butterflies with lilac-breasted rollers and eagles overhead along paths crisscrossed by millipedes and ghost crabs. After dark, fox-faced fruit bats and bush babies chirp and swing about in the banyan tree until moonrise over the Indian Ocean. A lonely American Hercules roars overhead on its way to and from the Somali coast twice a day but otherwise the sounds of humans are far away, drowned out by wading birds and the spring-tide waves thundering on white sand.

It feels as if this year has been all about waiting. Waiting for rain that never comes. Waiting for the elections to be over and Kenya to stay peaceful so that we can all sleep soundly, get up early and go back to work. Waiting for probate, permits, bits of important papers to come through, for boats to come in with big pay-offs, for the resolution of quarrels and long-running dramas and sagas. Waiting in massive airport queues and listening for hours to looped messages because nobody picks up the phone. Eventually it has to rain upcountry and one day it will but I wish it would just rain now!