We survived the worst drought in a generation

The Farm, Laikipia

I realised the worst drought of this generation was at last over this morning when two Samburu gentlemen arrived on the farm, asking to buy rams. My nomadic neighbours sense very well when it’s time to put a tup in with the flock. In just this month a full moon and the alignment of Lokir Ai and Lakira Dorop – Jupiter and Venus – had brought six inches of downpours, equal to almost all of last year’s rain and half of the precipitation in 2021. As Mr Lemartile crouched behind my Dorper rams, happily dandling their testicles for size and girth, we caught up on gossip and everybody was in such a good mood there was no need to bargain over prices. Flinging his red toga over his shoulder, Lemartile spat in the dust, punched numbers into his smart phone and paid his bill with M-Pesa digital money.

The hard times in my life have come and gone, but few have lasted unbroken for close to three years

On the roads in recent days, I’ve passed Samburu warriors wearing a new fashion of headdress with all their beads and dingley-danglies, which is a mohawk of spikes that reminds me of the Statue of Liberty’s seven-spiked crown. I suspect it’s not in celebration of King Charles’s coronation, but rather the lovely weather. In this corner of Africa, news of rain is part of a greeting, the lack of it is a shared burden or tragedy, and the arrival of it is a source of unbridled happiness to be enjoyed by us all.

Since the drought began on us 31 months ago it has been most strange. The dry hurt everybody across East Africa, yet there were downpours here and there and the cliché in conversations was that the rain had been ‘patchy’.