Aidan Hartley

Il Pinguaan Springs When I first saw the Pinguaan Springs they were small, fetid bogs set about with papyrus, the haunt of mercury-coloured frogs and dragonflies. I wondered why they were regarded as so important that you could find them on any half-decent map of Kenya. Without water, the farm we were building could never stir into life. In those days I did not know what to do. For two years we collected water in jerricans and loaded them on to donkeys to be trekked to the tent where we lived. Baboons defecated in the spring pools. We all came down with Giardia. On many of our adventures we were alone and I was foolhardy. Our neighbours regularly had to save our lives when bandits came, charging over the hill in response to radio alarms.

Colobus monkeys in the forest were throat singing like Tibetan monks. Mist rose from the Kericho tea gardens above us in the gloaming. My son Rider gazed longingly at the water. For a ten-year-old boy obsessed by fishing, patience is impossible. He yearns for that trout with every atom of his being. I was just trying to coach him on the joys of fishing even if one never caught a thing when the clouds above us tore apart with the noise of a B-52 bombing run, followed by rain that came in grenade-sized drops — and then the rod in Rider’s hand quivered and bent down as a rainbow trout hit the fly and stripped out line all the way to the backing. Panic erupted as I barked orders and, realising it was a good fish, tried to grab the rod from Rider’s hands.

Rift Valley ‘We’re on the frontline,’ I said. ‘And however many guns we had, it wouldn’t be enough against the cattle rustlers.’ ‘Yes,’ replied my friend Jamie, a shareholder in our farm. ‘You’re low-hanging fruit.’ I showed him the bullet holes riddling my Land Cruiser, and told him again about the ambush, the raids, how farm manager Celestina was having a nervous collapse, how the police never came to our rescue. ‘Jamie, we might have to give up the cattle,’ I said. ‘It will break my heart — this is what I had instead of a mistress to get me through middle age.’ ‘Aidan,’ he said, ‘they’re cows.

Rift Valley I am training for a half-marathon on the slopes of Mount Kenya in June and I must prepare myself for failure. I may not even make it to the starting gun because at 47 I can look back on a life littered with unfinished book projects, smashed resolutions and missed deadlines. Since I last ran cross-country at school I’ve drunk around 10,000 bottles of wine and at least 1,000 litres of vodka.For about 15 years, I smoked a pack of fags a day, so that’s 110,000 cigarettes. After school I rarely took exercise unless it involved chasing women, shooting birds, or running away from people shooting at me. Until now I have been able to delude myself that I am tough, frightfully tough, because I have ‘good genes’.

Gilgil, Kenya Pembroke House, our children’s school, is a little slice of England set in Kenya’s Rift Valley. In the shadow of extinct volcanoes they play cricket on extensive grounds. They learn Latin within miles of soda lakes swarming with pink flamingos. The pioneering, resourceful spirit of Pembroke is symbolised in the school’s Christina chapel, with owls in the bell tower, built entirely by a former generation of under-13s. Our son Rider and daughter Eve are enjoying a privileged, magical upbringing. This week children from a rather different, impoverished background joined them for carol singing and mince pies out under the tropical night sky. These are the kids from the Restart Centre, located only a mile or so from Pembroke.

Northern Kenya If I go out in darkness I dread neither the leopard nor the lion but I recoil from the aardvark: for me a terrifying creature. The ant bear, or earth pig, is a living fossil with snout of pig, a serpent’s tongue, ears of a rabbit and a kangaroo’s tail. A sangoma’s charm made from aardvark body parts gives the wearer powers to glide throwugh walls at night; ideal for thieves and seducers of guarded virgins. But who would wish to encounter an aardvark down a dark hole at night, this creature the size of a woman with vicious talons? I think about this whenever I pass an aardvark’s hole, and I remembered it a few days ago when tribal cattle rustlers in the depths of the Rift Valley ambushed a column of Kenyan police, slaughtering dozens.

Mogadishu I return to Mogadishu to find it’s calm – only a few assassinations, hit-and-run attacks, IEDs or suicide bombs — and at last most Somalis seem ready for peace. I’ve covered events here for 21 years and love imagining an end to war in this delightful city. I also know that it’s during times of calm, when you drop your guard — forgetting that there’s one rule for Somalis and another for foreigners — you end up dead. Mogadishu is a town I know so well I could find my way around it blindfolded. Sadly, since the early 1990s I haven’t been able to wander about on my own. High seas piracy is declining, but land-based gangs and Al-Shabaab insurgents still see Westerners like me as worth a few bob in ransom.