House work
Aidan Hartley Laikipia ur 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 a way to be admired.' 'No spotlight,' I say firmly.
After three years in tents and having spent a fortune we still have not moved into the house. Our Kenyan farm is a white elephant leaning on my chest. The way we have spent money causes me to have ghastly visions of wrist slashing, serious illness without insurance, falling towers and a runaway crack-cocaine addiction. We have constructed a railway that emerges from and goes nowhere in the jungle.
At this instant, the water boiler — an old oil drum modified to be heated over a wood fire — ruptures with an explosive hiss of steam. I rush across the building site to find Rufus the plumber, spanner in hand, looking unhappy. 'What's going on?' Rufus explains he took his mind off connecting up the boiler because since arriving at our remote and wild farm he has become severely constipated.
To help pay for the building I have had to opt for the most dangerous journalistic assignments. Surviving an ambush on a hillside in Congo got us an Ariston gas cooker and a bush fridge. A sojourn in Pakistan's NWFP covered the windows and doors. I managed to steal a couple of old iron baths from the backs of old colonial houses, fantasising that Happy Valleyites had once played together in them, but in the end I still had to visit Raju, the Nairobi agent, for 'genuinely British' Twyfords. That set me back a month among the Islamic militants in Mogadishu. Had I been assassinated my epitaph at St Bride's could have been: 'This man really needed a bath'. My future adventures into African interiors — as in curtains and other soft fabrics — will require several more forays across the continent. With each case of dysentery, incoming AKround or terrifying road-block experience, I can at least reassure myself that we have another sofa or towel rack purchased.
I tell Rufus we have nothing for constipation in the medicine cabinet so we walk through the banana grove to consult Claire in the kitchen hut, where a whole sheep is being butchered. She suggests an orange. 'It's what pregnant women use.' Rufus looks doubtful. My mother-in-law Jean, who is with the children singing to the ducks, is a fount of wartime home cures. She prescribes a whittled-down bar of soap. Rufus looks alarmed. 'Our last option is liquid paraffin,' I offer. It's what I give the cows. I take a swig from a bottle of the stuff to show him it's OK. 'I'll take the paraffin,' Rufus says with relief, and takes a dose.
I launch into a lecture about fibre in one's diet when Rufus exclaims, 'I must be going!' He takes off, sprinting for the forest's edge. Suddenly, Wachira is next to me. 'Now, what about the garden spotlight?"Please, not now, Wachira.' The solar system has collapsed. Kilos of postrain flying ants have clogged the swimming-pool filters, causing the system to overflow and short-circuit the pump. Meanwhile somebody has driven the car without oil and it now sits there, a seizedup smoking heap of shredded spare parts.
I ask myself, what makes our attempt here so different from all the grandiose projects that have failed in the beloved continent? I picture cash crops gone to seed, industrial plants sinking into the dunes, World Bank shoe factories that produce 12 flip-flops a year. And then I see myself as a bankrupt old fart shuffling down supermarket aisles buying mushy peas. Typical colonial, they'll say. Home from the hill and he can't even cook for himself.
Twenty minutes later I go to look for Rufus and on the grass I find his shoes and baseball cap neatly placed at head and foot of his green work overalls. Has Rufus spontaneously combusted? Perhaps he simply went up in smoke! But no, here comes Rufus. He's striding back through the long grass with a broad grin on his face. At this instant, before the Large Power electrician can corner me again about the garden spotlights, my man Celestina Achole Sikuku comes zooming up on his bicycle. I can see there's a problem even before he exclaims, Aldan! Come quickly! The cattle .
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