Aidan Hartley is the Spectator's Wild Life columnist.
In the summer of 1986 I got a job as a busboy in Burger King on the Champs-Elysées. I was given a funny pair of trousers, which I was ordered to wear as part of the uniform. I refused, and so later the very same day the only employment with steady prospects I’ve ever had
Aidan Hartley on the Wild Life Nairobi I want to say Kenya is a victim of negative press. Shady characters called bloggers are nicknaming the President’s new Peace cabinet of ministers ‘Ali Baba and his 40 Thieves’. That is very cheeky. Everybody knows there are 42 ministers, 52 assistant ministers and 42 permanent secretaries. But ‘Ali
Laikipia Gabriel Barasa was a week dead and already trouble was brewing. I could tell that as I stood at his grave on the farmstead. In 1966, Kenya’s government allocated Gabriel 27 acres of land, subdivided from a farm previously owned by a colonial European. The Trans Nzoia soil was very fertile. Today Gabriel would
As we entered the old city, the heat shimmered off coral towers half reduced to rubble by cycles of war. We had just exited Mogadishu’s presidential palace after a morning’s filming. Gemaal was at the wheel and Duguf rode shotgun. Cameraman Jim and I were in the back chatting. Then came the bang. Except I
Somalia I am in a refugee camp of 200,000 war victims on the outskirts of Mogadishu. The muezzin call to prayer drifts across a sea of plastic tents set among coconut palms and banana groves along the banks of the Shebelle River. Miles from here Ethiopian and Islamist insurgents are fighting in the streets and
As I write this, the crackle of gunfire is audible from the veranda of our farmhouse. Warriors of the Pokot and Samburu are fighting a mile away. A bushfire engulfs the horizon. I hear the tally in blood so far is three Samburu warriors killed, and the Pokot have rustled 750 cattle. Today I hope
Nogales, Mexico After the purgatory of Arizona, I was so happy to cross the Mexico frontier I could have French-kissed the filthy streets. It was just like home in Africa. Meat tasted like meat and meals were eaten to a joyous soundtrack of buzzing bluebottles. Stray dogs basked in sunshine among wrecked cars as music
I had an epiphany at 5.30 a.m. the other day in a Shanghai club packed with gangsters, prostitutes and flat-bellied Thai transsexuals. I watched a little guy, in his forties like me, dancing with two women dressed as schoolgirls. Then he collapsed drunkenly to the floor. White-jacketed attendants appeared. Instead of ejecting the man, they
The author’s arrest while investigating Chinese prisons A crowd of faeces-stained, starving figures with haunted eyes stared at us from behind the bars. Some looked cold and wet, as if they had been hosed down with water. Most of them were old, and some handicapped. They began wailing and pleading with us. ‘Let us out!’
Malindi I watched a nest of baby turtles hatch on the beach in front of my mother’s house recently. What a hellish start to a life, I thought. You burrow up through sand and plastic rubbish discarded by tourists. On the race towards the sea everybody wants to eat you: ghost crabs, herons, crows and
Beijing I am in Beijing making a film about the Olympic city with an ex-Lancashire police constable named Andrew. We spend our days aimlessly zooming around vast building sites. Most of the skyscrapers are covered with what resembles sanitary tiling. I feel we are trapped in a giant bathroom, with all the humans being flushed
Laikipia I ask my neighbours how one fixes a chimney. Laikipia I ask my neighbours how one fixes a chimney. ‘Throw a live, flapping turkey down it,’ says one. It appears chimney-sweeps are unknown in Kenya. ‘Or lower down a sack with two tomcats in it.’ Another suggests blasting a 12-bore up the flue. My
Northern Kenya I sat down to write this next to the skull of a Samburu cattle rustler who recently fell in battle. Nothing remains of him for us to bury today except his cranium, some healthy teeth and an anorak. Hyenas ate the rest. His last moments are recorded by the red ochre war paint
Kenya I have hated flying since 1989, when I was in a Boeing 737 that crashed into an Ethiopian mountain, lost its wings and burst into flames. Surviving that one was followed by years of pre-check-in heavy drinking. As if that were not enough, I now suffer this wrenching guilt about all the carbon I
Laikipia Our farmhouse is at the finishing stage and Wachira, the electrician from Large Power and Control, is advising me on aesthetics. ‘A spotlight in the garden is a beauteous thing to behold,’ he urges. I reply, ‘Fine, but can we talk about house lighting first?’ ‘Yes, but we must illuminate the garden path in
Kiunga, on the Kenya–Somali border He was a quiet American, and an oddity in Kiunga. For 20 hours I had rammed the Range Rover through tsetse fly-infested jungles teeming with buffalo. When earlier this month I limped into this Indian Ocean village, within earshot of US air strikes against Islamists across the frontier in Somalia,
Kibera Court No. 2 Normally, I would bribe a traffic policeman, but very occasionally it feels good to hit back against the system. ‘Go ahead. Book me,’ I said. The copper, a huge creature with rolls of fat around his neck and piggy eyes, sighed as if to say, ‘You poor dope.’ ‘OK, I’m taking
Nairobi Tom Cholmondeley has done it again. The scion of Kenya’s Delameres has shot dead another black African trespasser on his Rift Valley farm. This is his second in a year. Kenya’s authorities, which gave up trying to pronounce his name and settled for ‘Tom Chom’, let him go first time. That won’t matter on
Democratic Republic of Congo This week I joined United Nations forces in the Congo for an offensive against rebel militias. ‘We’re the only ones who want to fight,’ said the South African colonel, cussing the other blue helmet contingents. ‘They’re too scared to go forwards and I’m tired of it.’ Pakistanis bombarding the opposite hillside
Nairobi The finest view of what Kenya’s corrupt political leaders have done to this beautiful nation may be observed from the summit of Africa’s largest rubbish dump, Nairobi’s Dandora dumpsite. A horde of children and women are sifting through the stinking trash, recovering scrap metal to be sold at twopence a kilo. They each make