Rainy Season on the Cattle Stock Route
From the side of the track, a Samburu youth waved me down. I stopped the vehicle. He was gorgeously dressed for market day: all feathers, beads, disks of aluminium, with ochre on his head and bare shoulders. He wore in his beaded belt a stabbing sword in a leather scabbard. In his left hand he carried a herding stick and metal-headed knobkerrie. In his right was a long spear with a teardrop blade at the point, and this he hid in the branches of a wait-a-bit thorn tree for safekeeping until his return. He loped towards me, spat in his palm and shook my hand. He asked for a lift and I told him to get in. I was on a supply run to town.
In the back I carried empty butane tanks, crates of empty beer and soda bottles. It had rained overnight. Near the Lolldaiga hills the black cotton soil had turned to sticky mud along the track, which curved in a series of sharp bends. I fought with the wheel as the 4×4 skidded, but reckoned I had the hang of it and drove at a respectable speed. Next to me the young Samburu chattered away. His cheerful warbling made me laugh so much I took my eye off the road as we turned too fast into a sharp bend.
At that moment a Kikuyu market lorry came hurtling towards us, horn blaring, metal parts clattering, tyres churning. What stays in my memory is the motto emblazoned on his windscreen: LIFE IS SHORT — PRAY HARD. We were both out of control, but the lorry was bigger than me. To avoid getting squashed I spun the wheel hard to the left.
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