Night falls like a fire curtain at seven and I go to bed not long afterwards, serenaded by bullfrogs after rain. Having risen long before dawn, ranchers tend to sleep early, following a thin gruel of a supper. In upcountry Kenya it used to be that pyjamas and dressing-gowns were permissible for even quite posh dinners. Once in a blue moon, one might keep a farmer awake with good whisky or rugby to watch. Sometimes, once an evening gets going, by night’s end there’s reeling and the light bulbs are being used for target practice. Not more than once or twice in a year, mind you, or this can crowd out a man.
Not an hour after I’ve shut my eyes I wake again. From below my window come vaguely Jurassic, subsonic rumbles. I stumble outside, to find the night askari Akope flashing his torch around. In the inky black, a tree is pushed over. I send up a flare, which illuminates a dozen elephant consuming my herbaceous borders. They canter off, demolishing a wide section of dry-stone wall.
Back in the house, the dogs are silent. The family are all away, at school or in other continents for work. I am getting to that point where I have started holding quite complex conversations with the dogs. ‘Cowards,’ I say now and get back into bed.
I doze off to the insect wall of sound. With a start I wake again and time has passed. I do not know what disturbed me but the insects have suddenly gone quiet. I wonder what makes them stop, what they are waiting for. Out here, many miles from the nearest road, there is no noise at all, only the rush of blood in my ears, and that faint, unceasing rumble of the earth turning that you hear in the bush.
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