Wild life | 20 October 2016

Kenya

A woman’s bottom cheered me up recently. The lady was walking ahead of me in a Kenya street and she was wearing a kanga — a local garment worn like a bath towel and printed with colourful geometric designs. A kanga is traditionally emblazoned with a Swahili proverb or scrap of esoteric advice, making it a bit like a wearable fortune cookie. This one had written neatly across it: Huwezi kula n’gombe mzima halafu ukasema mkia umekushinda

— which roughly means, ‘Don’t eat a whole cow and then say you’re defeated by the tail…’ Persevere! Never give up! That was the message I took home to the farm. I became a farmer in Kenya almost by mistake. I thought it would be a fun project to buy a parcel of wilderness and develop it 14 years ago. We pitched a tent, donkeys carried the water home, and for my birthday Claire gave me a heifer I named Buttercup. Our toddler children took their baths in a bucket under a tree. There were few people around in the district and across the vast plains at night you couldn’t see a single electric light. When rustlers stole our cattle and we had to track them for days I thought it was almost quaint. In a way it was fun. I was spooked a bit when a bandit emptied an entire clip of AK-47 rounds into my vehicle while I was driving to a neighbouring ranch for dinner. Last year a gang of invaders surrounded me near my home and threw rocks at me. Recovering in hospital afterwards, I decided it was time to devote all my efforts to farming. Otherwise it was clear we would lose it to the trespassers local politicians were inciting to overrun ranches and conservation areas.