Laikipia

The principal of the local polytechnic was waiting for me in the kitchen. Frequently in the kitchen there is a chief or a surveyor, or geese, or the cats Omar and Bernini, the dogs Jock, Sasi and Potatoes, foundling lambs or calves gambolling about hoping for milk, or stockmen with news of a sick cow, or armed askaris clumping in after a hard night to lay assault rifles down on the counter before slurping mugs of sugar-loaded tea. Bees try to swarm behind the fridge and one day Milka, the cook, primly announced there was a big snake coiled on the shelf of pots and pans. In her Cold Comfort Farm Miss Stella Gibbons talked of ‘clettering’ the dishes. You should have seen the clettering of kitchenware as I went after that snake, which rose up out of the Le Creuset, an 8ft Ashe’s large brown spitting cobra with a head the size of my fist.

But I hadn’t met a polytechnic principal in the kitchen before. As African despots wield power through their kitchen cabinets, I manage our African cattle ranch through the farm kitchen. All meetings with the highest officials or the closest friends take place here. When I arrived, it appeared the entire academic staff of the local technical college had come to say hello. The heads of plumbing, masonry, carpentry, farming science and accountancy all sat down to tea. They were polite and charming in that typically Kenyan way. They roared with laughter when I told them British tertiary education staff were always on strike. They were intrigued to hear how in England, all plumbers became millionaires without ever turning up to work.

Surrounded by gardens, our kitchen stands away from the houses and huts where we sleep, work or eat. Throughout our early years, when all this was just bush and elephants, we lived in tents and the kitchen was our first proper building. It’s so solid a Somali observed admiringly: ‘Those walls could stop bullets.’ The building isn’t only a cookhouse or scullery. Between the kitchen and a large store is a radio room where a VHF station barks out transmissions between herders. Flashing lights and boxes monitor the performance of solar panels and batteries running farm buildings, plus 12 miles of electric fencing, all powered by the sun. There is a table laden with livestock dip for ticks, deworming drench, antibiotics, penicillin and substances to help with bloat, foot rot, mastitis, eye problems, calving problems, injuries, bites and stress.

The local polytechnic has recently been built on a spot over the horizon from us where, until five years ago, there was nothing at all but wilderness and herds of zebra. Now the college is filling up with young students from every corner of Kenya. The idea of a Samburu cattle man’s son becoming a carpenter or electrician would, until now, have had people doubled up on the floor crying with laughter. But it is happening. Around the college a livestock market has sprung up and a trading centre that teems with nomads and farmers every market day. Jason, the polytechnic principal, asked if we could supply farm produce at cheap prices to his students and I said how keen I would be to do that. The kitchen already gets piled with trays of eggs from our chickens. The carcasses of sheep, goats and cockerels hang in the rafters and, when the seasons are right, we get citrus, papaya, bananas and vegetables in from our gardens. I have ambitions soon to supply avocados, vegetables, tilapia fish and whatever else I can rear for the burgeoning local population.

Jason asked if we could take some of his students on as interns for work experience and at this I had to confess that we ourselves were still learning. Farming for me has involved repeating my failures over many years, with only incremental improvements. I may claim it’s because we live on a frontier where I’m pioneering macadamia nuts. The truth is that I am a stubborn amateur, while my stockmen are traditional nomads who approach most veterinary problems with witchcraft. As for amateurs learning from their mistakes, nobody from the college had heard of Jeremy Clarkson. The fact is, I told Jason, we were probably the ones who needed to learn from his graduates. It impressed me that our remote corner of northern Kenya has become a place where progress is taking place. I wanted to live up here in order to get away from the world. Now the world is coming to us.