Laikipia
I have a mob of finished Boran steers ready for the holidays. The butchers are suddenly chasing me and that’s a fine feeling. A year ago, we were in the worst drought for 50 years, with invasions of armed herders and 2,000 cattle. We were left with not a blade of grass. Our cattle were heartbreaking to see. Since then we’ve had rain every month. The animals have grown fat on rippling seas of red oat pasture. Now I must sell up, or I shall be penniless at Christmas. Or the Samburu will go mad with the temptation, rustle them and scoff the lot in the forest.
The butchers come knocking. One says that in the name of the Lord he can’t pay a shilling more than one-oh-five per live-weight kilo. A Somali broker, working for a baron sitting cross-legged surrounded by cellphones in a distant town, has diddled me on prices once before. William, George, John, Idris — they come and go. At least there’s Ngugi, who wears a bucket hat, calls me ‘Hartree’ and pays a fair price.
But if only the great butchers, King’uku and King’ori, were still with us. King’uku always said he liked to buy a cow as fat as himself. At this he’d pat his enormous belly. With his hawk eyes, single long incisor tooth, bald pate and multiple chins, he was the most distinctive butcher I ever clapped eyes on. When he came to buy my steers or cull ewes — which he called ‘whores’ — he would produce from multiple dewlaps and secret pockets huge wads of grubby, smelly, small-denomination notes.
King’uku started out carrying hides and skins on his back, until he persuaded a local beef baron, T—D—, to give him a steer on tick.
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