From Ducati to boda-boda bicycle...the Billary Effect

My vet told me I could start riding Joya again, as she is over her bout of billary (tick-borne disease, nasty!). Yesterday we went on a short hack, mostly walking with some trotting and a few very short canters.

She was fine, but the difference between Joya in top condition, and Joya after an illness and three weeks off work, is huge! Since I'd recently been wrangling with my husband and son about which is more fun, motorcycles or horses (I know, stupid question), the comparison that came to mind was between a Ducati and the bicycle taxis here, which are called boda-bodas.

Because one thing horses teach you is to look at the bright side of your setbacks -- a great gift, really -- I have decided to take advantage of Joya's rather low-energy state to work on the things she just doesn't tolerate working on when she is feeling strong. Getting on the bit while at the walk, for example. Smoothing out her turn on the forehand. Really straightening out our signals for turn on the haunches.

Meanwhile, I'll be dropping my stirrups more and doing more sitting while trotting.

Goodbye Riffraff

I did say that I would be going on and on about my great S. African safari, didn't I?

This will be it, though, I promise...

I just wanted to mention two particular moments that will stick with me for a long time.

The first is from our longest wild charge down the beach.  Just before giving us the Go signal, Howard told us all, "Just one thing to watch out for. Sometimes there might be a baby seal on the beach this time of year, and when they see the horses coming sometimes they move. Nothing to worry about, but your horse might be startled."

I immediately filed that under the things guides tell us to make us think we might have an adventure...like the elaborate inspection of any bush you are considering going behind to have a quick pee when out in the bush. "Lions. You never know." I just never believe that there's going to be a lion.

Silly me. Two minutes down the beach, and a baby seal -- just as cute as you might expect, if not cuter -- makes a mad dash for the sea, right in front of us. None of the horses spooked, and he wriggled safely out of our way.

The second was on our last day of riding. We had gone with Howard to one of the farms where he pastures his horses to bring a bunch of expectant mares and a few older foals over to Farm 215. Howard was riding his boss mare Nona, who looked about ready to give birth right there in the road, and the rest of us were on our regular rides. Howard and Nona led the way, the other mares and foals following, and the rest of us behind to discourage stragglers.

One part of our path took us alongside a big reservoir of water for the farms nearby. Because it's been raining so much, the path along one side of the reservoir was actually under about two feet of water. It was just so much fun watching the foals and their moms splashing through the water, then following them, everyone just having a good time. Then our final long canter along the shore of the reservoir... right by a pair of blue cranes, enormous strange birds, making their rackety clackety sound.

Hanging out with Riffraff, continued....

Our five days of S. African riding was centered on the Stanford/Hermanus/Gasbaai area. According to the Farm 215 website, Hermanus hosts the only traffic light in the entire Overberg region, and that is NOT meant as a compliment to Hermanus.

Between Hermanus and Gansbaai is a beautiful stretch of sandy shore that is a nature reserve. Howard's company is allowed access to the reserve for riding. On our first day, that beach was our destination, with our minds on a wild beach gallop to test our horse/rider partnerships, and our nerves.

A plan that was made without regard for the WIND. It was howling off the ocean that day (this is spring in S. Africa, and the weather tends towards the psychotically changeable). As we trudged through the dunes edging closer to the shore, the wind grew stronger and stronger, picking up more and more of that fine white sand. We struggled to find things to wrap around our faces, going for that Lawrence of Arabia-meets-Hidalgo look, managed a few minutes actually on the beach, and then retreated, joking about how we hadn't been told about the free micro-dermabrasion treatments included in the safari.

From there, we trekked to a beautiful self-catering guesthouse behind the dunes, which came complete with a herd of eland outside, satellite TV inside. Inside Sven, the mainstay of the safari support effort, was putting out the sour-cream-and-onion flavored potato chips and cooking pasta, also uncorking a nice bottle of S. African red (all the best stuff stays in the country, very selfish of them). 

Howard's wife and daughter were also there to greet us, along with their brand new puppy. I wish I could tell you her name, but each time I asked, I got a different answer...Chewy and Panda are the two I remember.

Hanging out with Riffraff in South Africa

Let me make one thing perfectly clear: I love Joya. I did not fall in love with another mare, going by the disreputable name of Riffraff, during my recent trip to South Africa.

It's true that we spent a glorious five days together. Yes, I fed her carrots by hand. Yes, I was overheard admiring her deep brown eyes and the fetching star on her forhead. What can I say? The sun was shining, the whales were jumping, the fynbos was blooming. It was a brief moment of madness, but I'm completely over it.

I'm sure Riffraff has forgotten me by now in any case. Meanwhile, Jane, who makes it a rule to never, ever fall off a horse, is almost back to normal after inexplicably finding herself on her back on the road after her safari partner took fright at the sudden appearance of cow from behind a bush. 

Our five-day ride, organized and guided by African Horse Company founder Howard Krut, was terrific. Jane and I were joined by another Nairobi friend, and a young South African woman none of us had met before, a 29-year-old endurance rider, A. Before we set off, and before we met her, Jane and I had been quite intimidated at the thought of heading out on trail with such a young and undoubtedly fit companion.

In retrospect, I think it was very brave of A. to sign up for five days with three strange (well, not very strange) women...I can't imagine anything worse than spending up to eight hours a day in a saddle in the company of people you don't like, so it was a great relief to discover we all got along.

Our trail started at Farm 215 in the Overberg region of the Western Cape of South Africa. Given the name, we didn't know quite what to expect. It turned out to be a lovely guest house with a Scandinavian flair, good food, and very comfortable rooms. It's on what is being marketed as "the fynbos trail," which is a network of hiking trails through the famed fynbos ecosystem of this part of the South African coast. I can't really explain what fynbos is, except it translates as "fine bush" and is made up of a staggering variety of unusual plant life, most of which was in flower as we rode...proteas, everlastings, and who knows what else.

(to be continued...)

A tick in the ointment

Poor Joya has billary! A nasty tick-borne disease that can really knock a horse back. So it probably wasn't my cheese-cucumber sandwich diet to blame for our poor showing at the Kabete Happening.

My vet says at least two weeks of no riding, others I've talked to say it can take up to six weeks for a good recovery. Apparently billary puts a real strain on a horse's heart so you have to be very cautious. So we've withdrawn from the Sanctuary Farm Event in Naivasha and may have to withdraw from the Horse of The Year Show here in Nairobi in early December.

Fortunately our scyce Peter caught on very quickly that Joya wasn't feeling well. We came back from the show last Sunday afternoon, at which point she seemed well enough, and Peter called me Tuesday morning to say she wasn't eating and wasn't acting like herself. The vet came out right away to draw blood and could tell immediately what the problem was, so she started treatment even before the blood test was done.

By Wednesday, she was eating her hay, though still turning her nose up at her feed, and was perfectly content to inhale the carrots I brought her. Thursday, she didn't want her carrots, so I panicked a bit. Today, Saturday, she ate her grain, gobbled her carrots AND pinned her ears at me in a classic Joya mean-girl moment, and I knew she was going to be OK.

Kids & Ponies

I've had some time recently to watch and photograph one of life's great relationships, the one between children and their ponies. There is a lot about the horse-human relationship that is so instructive for kids, and sometimes so difficult.

This image, which I think of as the Centaur, sort of sums it up. (And has the advantage of not being a recognizable picture of the child involved, which is why I can't post most of the nice pictures I have taken recently). 

I've never been to a horse show without tears, falls, frustration and fear for some young riders. But I've never been to one where I didn't also see children encouraging their ponies, ponies working hard to keep their children safe and in the saddle, and both children and ponies rejoicing in the sheer fun of running, jumping, and hanging around together.

Last weekend at the Kabete Happening I spent half an hour at one of the cross-country jumps at the far end of the course. Cross-country is an interesting thing to watch, because the course is so long that there is no audience at all, just a judge at each jump, and the rider and horse have a feeling of being out there all alone. The horses are going faster, because it's a timed event, and because with the jumps so widely spaced the horses don't need to be so controlled in their speed (because they don't have to turn sharply to the next obstacle).

At this jump, as each child came by and negotiated the obstacle (a big log), every single one had a nice thing to say to their horse..."Good girl!" "Nice job!" "Way to go!" And I though how lovely it was that as these pony-rider teams were tearing through the landscape jumping solid and sometimes scary obstacles,  the kids were so focused on how their ponies were doing.

High-contrast images

My last post was made just before setting off on a five-day horse safari in S. Africa. The safari was great, and I will be going on and on about it later, once I get my pictures sorted and my laundry done.

I got back last Wednesday night, and then on Thursday it was time for Joya to head over to Jamhuri Park for the Kabete Happening, a sort of short-form event plus regular horse show. Maybe because I was tired, maybe because I hadn't ridden Joya in over a week, maybe because our safari organizer could only think of one thing to feed a vegetarian for lunch, and that thing was cheese and cucumber sandwiches...whatever the reason, it was a tough outing for Joya and me.

But when it was all over, what stuck with me most was a painfully sharp sense of contrast.

No mystery as to the source of that feeling...I've posted before about the uneasy contradiction between horse sports on the one hand, and extreme poverty and underdevelopment on the other.

From about jump 4 on the Jamhuri course, that contradiction is a slap in the face, a kick in the ass, and a knock on the head, as one of Africa's best-known slums, Kibera, presents itself as the backdrop to the course...

In the past, while aware that Jamhuri Park and Kibera are near neighbors, I had never really understood how near. That's because I had something of a habit of falling off my horse at jump 2 or 3, so we never got past the stable area. This time, with a somewhat firmer grasp on what I was doing, I actually walked the course (twice), and with a somewhat firmer grip on the saddle, I actually made it all the way around the pre-Novice course (though not without various stops and starts and bobbles and errors).

(The Kabete Happening, it's worth noting, raises quite a lot of money through sponsorship and entry fees to support various child-centered projects in Kibera. It's not like I'm the only person to NOTICE the enormous slum and the enormous need it represents.)

South African adventure

We are starting our horse safari this morning...In about a half-hour, I will meet the horse I'll be riding for the next five days.

A friend and I spend the day yesterday meandering along the coast from Capetown to Hermanus and beyond, whale watching and snacking on enormous strawberries (hard to find in Kenya). Then we drove to Farm 215, the starting point for our safari, a very cool, Scandinavian-style eco-lodge surrounded by windswept hills with a distant view of the ocean.

Now I'm sitting at the guest computer with my helmet on, which must look pretty silly, waiting for our guide.

Not Good at Sharing!

I have just agreed to let someone else ride my horse at an eventing clinic Joya and I are doing this weekend. I'll be riding her too, but young T. will borrow Joya for the show-jumping and cross-country portions of the clinic.

I was not easily convinced. My arm is still sore from all the twisting. I hope I made the right decision -- Joya will probably learn something, and I will have a chance to watch her from the ground, which is always instructive.

But it got me thinking about what would be the equivalent, for a non-rider, to my agreeing to loan someone my horse.

Here's what I came up with: a combination of me loaning out my first-born child, and my brother-in-law letting someone else drive his Porsche Boxster. The first-born child covers the "you want to borrow MY BABY????" feeling, and the Boxster covers the "this is something that flies, and needs expert handling, and must not be scratched or dented" factor. (And probably, now that I think about it, the "you want to borrow MY BABY" part as well, at least as far as my b-in-l is concerned.)

In the Money???

Yesterday morning was the wrap-up of the Nairobi Fair horse show.

Joya and I placed second in the Division II show jumping (80 cm) and in the Novice Combined Training (which is scored on results in a preliminary dressage test from the previous day, and the 80 cm jumping).

That was a great result for us -- though due to a scoring error, not as great as we'd thought. The announcer called us as the winners in combined training, then had to take it back! Bummer.

My ribbon was blue though -- here in Kenya, the winner gets red. I assume this is a British thing. 

Joya was just flying over the jumps. When I saw how easily she was going over at 80 cm, I put us down as a last-minute entry in the 90 cm class. That's a height we haven't jumped since before the long summer break, and one we haven't jumped very often ever. It still looks pretty big to me.

And she did great. We only had one rail down, at a jump right in front of a huge crowd of kids. She hesitated, then I gave her a kick and she did a sort of kangaroo hop over the fence. I almost fell off, but she kindly stopped until I could fight my way back into the saddle, then off we went and finished the course clear.

It's a good thing she stopped. There's a new rule this year that falling off your horse means instant elimination. Last year, you could fall off once, remount, and continue.

The experience made me feel that at least one of my goals -- a clear round at 1 meter -- is within reach, knock wood.  Still, those 10 cm are somehow quite a bit bigger than the ones between 80 and 90. Something for the physicists to figure out.

On the other hand, my dressage goal seems quite far away...though we won the preliminary class, our score was nowhere near what is required for 60 percent.

Our results netted us 700 Kenyan shillings in prize money...that's about $8.50. But when I went to the office to collect, I was told I couldn't get my prize money unless I could produce my passport!

Whenever I win any prize money (which has happened only twice before) I hand my meager winnings to Peter, since without him I would not be able to function at shows at all. He braids Joya's mane and tail, keeps her gleaming, keeps her fed and happy, sits with her in the trailer, holds the reins while I fiddle with my stirrup leathers. Also, I've been teaching him to use my camera, and he took these pictures.

So, I felt morally obligated to give Peter 700 shillings, even though I didn't get it from the show organizers. Which is just another example of way the horse riding life will come up with new and creative ways to eat your money.

Camels, balloon hats, and schoolkids, Oh My

Today was the first day of the horse-show portion of the annual Nairobi Agricultural & Trade Fair.

Talk about a horse of a different color! Usually, shows here feature lots of horses and competitors, a sparse but knowledgeable audience made up predominantly of competitors, competitors' family members and pets, and the odd (as in occasional, rather than strange) boyfriend or girlfriend.

This show features a tiny handful of competitors, a HUGE audience (in horse show terms, anyway), and a thrilling bass beat provided by the entertainment going on in the main stadium a few hundred yards away.

The cozy, cliquish familiarity is entirely swept away by the presence of  hundreds of people with little experience of horse sports and a stolid refusal to be caught up in our own heartfelt enthusiasm for this oddball activity. I have titled the image below "Huh?", which seems to sum up the audience attitude.

And I'm not sure these guys really got the finer points of our warm-up for the Preliminary Dressage test:

I was not surprised to learn that Joya takes a dim view of camels. There were about a dozen camels at the show, giving rides to delighted schoolchildren, and making their own feelings known through their distinctive growl/rumble/roar. Which I think is the part Joya really doesn't like. Unless it's another version of the old horse-not-a-horse problem that makes donkeys so problematic.

We were pretty pleased to come home with a 1st place ribbon and a cute cup in the Preliminary Dressage...and to make our way around the Division I jumping course (70 cm) with no rails down and only a couple of mild freak-outs. Brought down a few notches by a very low (and deserved) score in the Novice B dressage...and heading back tomorrow morning for Division II at 80 cm, and if we go clear and are feeling brave, perhaps Division III at 90 cm as well.

Helicopter coverage, anyone?

My horse safari on South Africa's whale coast starts in just a couple of weeks, so I've been filling out forms full of questions about my riding abilities, my preferred type of horse, my weight (the nerve!), etc. etc.

Among my favorite questions: "Does your medical insurance cover evacuation by helicopter?"

Doesn't that make you stop and think for a minute? Doesn't it give this horse safari a certain James Bond glow? It's the illusion that we'll be living life on the edge...within a reality that includes a cozy bed and a glass or two of nice South African wine at the end of each day.

Cheers.

Baby's New Boots

Silent Velcro. That is what the horse world is waiting for, according to Joya.

Now that we are trailering up to Tigoni on a semi-regular basis, and we've got some out-of-town horse shows on the horizon, I have bought Joya a beautiful set of green shipping wraps. Her old set were too big and would flop down around her legs like baggy bad-boy jeans. She didn't like the look, she didn't like the feel.

The new ones fit great, and are stiff enough to sort of stand up all by themselves, which eliminates that unsightly wrinkle around the hocks. Why do they fit so well? YARDS of Velcro divided into lots and lots of strips.

Opening them. Putting them on. Taking them off. By the time you're done, you've subjected your horse to that horrible ripping-the-skin-off-the-cat Velcro sound effect a few dozen times. The first time we suited Joya up in her new gear, she looked down with a sort of horrified fascination, trembling lightly all over. When we took them off, the look changed to one of barely concealed terror. Maybe she thought we were waxing her legs?

That said, she bravely held her ground, and wore her new boots with pride the next day when we rode out to Tigoni.

With all the fuss over Joya's boots, we were slow to realize that Beauty, who is a bit of an old lady in the trailer, leaning into every little turn, had rubbed a bare spot on her tail from sort of leaning back and sitting on the chain when we were driving the curvy bits.

Fortunately, Gabe in Tigoni found an old polo wrap and a bit of tie, and he sprayed the raw spot with blue stuff then packaged her tail quite neatly for the ride home. Now we have dug out some old tail wraps from under the rest of the oddments in the tack basket and are having them repaired.

Things Fall Apart....

With a show just two weeks away, I've been trying to do some jumping schools in our home boma. But it's not easy -- even setting up three jumps has become a challenge. First of all, the lovely plastic barrels I like to use for building an oxer have been requisitioned to hold water. We have a drought here in Kenya and water is strictly rationed, so on the days the water is on we need to fill the barrels to have enough for the horses on dry days.

Second, the termites! Sometimes I think if you could put Kenya on a scale and weigh it, then subtract the weight of the bugs, you'd find the country is about 50 percent soil and rock, 50 percent bug.

Third, my clumsy mare! Because of the termites, I bought PVC pipes to use for jumps and trotting poles about a year ago. They were too light, so we put some sand inside and capped the ends, and they have worked well. Unfortunately, I've discovered that with time, the pipes become brittle. Joya destroyed three of them in a single schooling session trotting and cantering over -- and sometimes on -- ground poles.

Because of the way they shatter, I have decided they aren't safe to use anymore...too many jagged edges.

Satellite TV Karma!

OK, so I walked into the TV room in our house in Nairobi, turned it on...and what comes up? World-class show-jumping! The Global Champions Tour, VDL Group Grand Prix. Gorgeous Euro-horses jumping enormous obstacles in fabulous style.

Now, given that even here in Kenya we get about a hundred channels on our satellite service, and given that only a minuscule percentage of the airtime on any one of them is devoted to that ratings killer of all time, equestrian sports, I found that extremely unlikely.

So I sat and watched the final 40 minutes or so. Which is also extremely unlikely, as my television attention span has shrunk to the point I need a microscope to find it. And I was riveted. Here's why...(are you listening, Jane?) After a heart-stopping jump-off, third place finisher (just .5 sec off the winning round) was a 60-year-old frenchman, Michel Robert, who I gather is sort of the George Morris of France.

Yes, 60. Almost 61, as the announcer pointed out. Sure, in the horse sports we older athletes have an undeniable advantage...in that our equine partner can be as young as we like. And let's not forget who is actually jumping those heart-stopping oxers and spooky liverpools. Still, that doesn't mean that you can ride at the top levels without being a pretty fine athlete.

And just to make it perfect, the first and second place finishers were women. And at least one of them, I think both, were riding mares.

Party Bus or Mom's Taxi Service?

Now that Jane and I are all hyped up about Tigoni -- we're going again tomorrow -- I'm obsessing a bit about how nerve-wracking it is getting a horse from point A to point B (especially when you've got Banana and Little Banana in between, two little towns with a universe-worth of chaos and approx. 79 speed bumps between them).

It doesn't help that Joya and I have very different opinions on the best way for her to travel.

Joya just loves a lorry. For her, I think it's like riding the team bus to an away game in high school. Five other horses! Some of them sure to be geldings! Endless snacking! Opportunities for flirting and feuding!

I, on the other hand, hate a lorry. I look at them all loaded in there with their heads sticking out the side, and my imagination runs wild. I see the lorry careening around a corner, out of control, much to close to a telephone pole... Plus, who is this guy driving the thing? Does he know where he is going? Does he fully appreciate the nature of the load, which is to say heavy, living, a tad neurotic and in all honesty not that smart?

So, I like my friend's two-horse trailer. I know the driver, 'cause the driver is me. I know where I am going. And I know -- I really know -- that everyone else out there on the road is crazy.

Joya thinks trailers are for nerds and wimps. It's like having Mom drive you to the prom. She used to load quietly enough, but then got a bit shirty about it after I took her to Gilgil all by herself, and then brought her back again with a jump in the other half. It was a jump she never much liked anyway.

So, before our first trip to Tigoni last week, Peter and I practiced loading Joya and Beauty into the trailer. First try, total failure. But by the fifth time, it all went pretty quietly, as long was Beauty went first...

"I'll follow you anywhere!"

Morning Tea in Tigoni

We finally did it!

About a year ago, I set out to learn to haul a trailer. A riding buddy offered to let us use his trailer as needed, so I had a hitch and an electrical connection put on my Toyota Prado, and I took a few trips up and down the road, then a bit further afield to taste traffic, and we were good to go.

The main motivation was so that Jane and I could take our horses to Tigoni to ride. It didn't take me long to learn how to drive with a trailer behind (just don't watch me back up). Since then, I've gotten sucked into the whole horse show racket, so it's been a useful skill. But that dream of ours -- riding our own beloved horses in our most favorite corner of Kenya -- was elusive.

But, as I keep telling myself, this is my year to do it all -- cram in as much Kenya and as much horse as I can. So on Friday, our scyce Peter and I took the horses next door for a refresher course in loading. That went about as well as could be expected, though no actual injuries resulted, and at 8:30 Saturday morning we set off.

Tigoni is only about 20 minutes by car from our end of Nairobi. To get there, you go through Little Banana and Banana proper, past the Kentmere Club and up to the top of a ridge. You come down the ridge and turn a corner and...breathtakingly....you are presented with a green landscape of acacias, huge fig trees, and tea. It screams AFRICA.

We had permission to park the trailer at a beautiful farm next door to where Jane and her family rented a house for years. We unloaded, Peter tacked the horses up, and then Jane and I set off for two-plus hours of riding on red soil paths through tea, trees, and maize.

We stopped first for a photo op in front of some over-the-top flame trees in exuberant bloom. Joya thought they might be good to eat so she backed me right into the branches.

Still feeling like that 29-year-old endurance rider is breathing down our necks, we did a lot of trot work. The girls bravely confronted such terrors as cattle eating rustly corn stalks in a frighteningly noisy fashion, donkeys giving them that scary "we are more alike than you want to admit" look, and children kicking around a soccer ball made of brightly colored plastic bags wound up tight and tied with twine.

Back in the trailer, Joya (who is not entirely sure about trailers) looked for some reassurance from Beauty, who is definitely the big sister in the relationship, and Jane and I spent the whole drive back asking ourselves why we had waited so long, and planning to come back every chance we get.

FEI Challenge comes back to haunt me...

I have discovered a little-understood downside to having one's dressage teacher participate in a clinic taught by a hot-shot international FEI judge from Sweden. That is that said teacher comes to class the next day ON FIRE with new ideas.

J. and I came into the arena yesterday and ran headlong into A's steely new determination to get J. round and on the bit. Five thousand half-halts later, I think we actually semi-achieved this goal for a good four strides. And it was a lovely 10 seconds. But will we ever be able to stretch that 10 seconds out to last for an entire test?

(Photo above is NOT my horse. My horse only dreams of looking so cool.)

Nothing really wrong with all this, except for the screaming in my shoulder muscles and the equally painful reminder that I know nothing. It seems that my horse and I achieve the most fundamental goals of the dressage discipline approximately .001 percent of the time.

Ah well, pole pole (slowly slowly), as we say in Kenya

FEI and the impact of outsider eyes....

I spent the morning on Sunday at Jamhuri Park watching and photographing Kenya's participants in the 2009 FEI (that's Federation Equestre Internationale) World Dressage Challenge.

It was a beautiful sunny day for a change, and the horses were positively gleaming, as were the competitors in their bright white dressage jods. (Usually I think to myself, "White for horseback riding, how silly is that?" but yesterday I had to acknowledge it really does look sharp).

The Challenge is designed to "promote and expand horse riding skills in developing countries throughout the world". This year, 59 countries are taking part.

What happens is that experienced FEI international judges travel to the countries involved to judge the dressage tests. The next day, the top riders also benefit from a clinic with the international judges to review their performances and work on weaknesses. Kenya competes with other countries in the challenge through its national team score from the day. The same judges travel to the other countries in our zone to judge their horses and riders performing the exact same tests.

For an interested but not very accomplished dressage newbie like myself, it was great to see some of Kenya's best riders and horses putting forth their top effort. The atmosphere was very different from the usual "one big family" Kenyan horse show feeling. Fewer loose dogs, for one thing. Even the resident Jamhuri Park monkeys were making themselves scarce. The hadada ibises, however, will always be with us...fortunately Kenyan horses and ponies treat them with the lack of attention they deserve despite the horrible racket they make.


Instead, there was a clear feeling that everyone was -- slightly nervously -- putting on their Sunday best for the visitors "from away."

"We are to be taken seriously!" was part of the vibe. "Aren't we????" was the other part. And it made me think what an island the Kenyan world of horses and riders is, how despite itself this world bridles a bit defensively when scrutinized by the sleekly tailored representatives of Europe (Judge Bo Ahman from Sweden, in the awesome pink tie) and South Africa (Judge Sharon Rhode).

Clearly, it's not easy to ride to an international standard when you cannot truly compete internationally. But the effort seems to pay off...with riders ending the day talking about what they needed to do better (shorten their reins, for one thing), and planning for ways to intensify their training.

Going on a horse safari? Don't forget the condoms....

I've just sent in my deposit for a horse safari on the coast of South Africa in October. It will be a five-day trail, me and J2 and one or two other friends. We did a similar safari last October, and thinking about heading out again has made me remember what a great experience it was.

I did things I had never done before...gallop on the beach, ride a funky African ferry with the horses (see photo above), swim a river on horseback. It was the swimming a river that inspired the title for today's post. Our trail guide (see photo below, he's the one without the hat) told us the day before that the best way to keep our cell phones dry would be to put them each in a condom. And that evening after dinner he handed round those embarrassing little foil packets (instead of mints?).

We noticed that these were the lubricated kind. So we each spent a few minutes that evening washing our condoms, then hung them, like tiny Christmas stockings, over the towel rail in the bathroom to dry.

I can say that it is not always easy to get a cell phone to go willingly into a condom. But I can also say that everyone's cell phone survived the river dry and cozy. It really is an awesome tip, especially if your phone is not a flip phone, because not only does it stay dry, but the condom does not interfere with you using your phone, except perhaps psychologically.

This year's trail is taking us to the whale coast. In addition to our group from Kenya, we've learned that one other woman is joining us...a 29-year-old endurance rider.

Since J2 and I between us count well over a century of years, this is a slightly intimidating prospect. So this afternoon's hack was the start of our campaign to get ready to out-endure this unknown youngster and uphold the honor of the older rider... 2-1/2 hours with tons of trot work.

J. has a fantastic power trot, but she would always rather gallop (well, who wouldn't?), so keeping her at the trot was my fabulous upper-body workout for the day, and staying at the trot was HER fabulous gluteus maximus workout for the day, and by the end of it I was ready to fall into a glass of wine. She probably was too.

Killer Avocados!

The avocados are out to get us.

J. and I were having our weekly lesson with R. this morning. It's supposed to be a jumping lesson, but J. was having issues with her brakes so instead we were doing a lot of canter circles, canter-trot-walk transition, walk-canter transitions...all the stuff you do when it is mostly about getting your horse to listen to you instead of the gremlins. All going pretty well...until a gust of wind brought down about a half-dozen avocados all around us. None of them actually hit us. But it was a scary moment. These are big avocados, and they do have the equivalent of a golf ball in the middle after all.

So then it was time to dance a little.

I'm sure J. got her own back later today and ate them all.

We're thinking about entering the Agricultural Society of Kenya horse show, the weekend of Oct. 1 to Oct. 4. This is one I have never entered before. Because it takes place in conjunction with the annual ASK agricultural fair, it has a reputation of being a bit chaotic.

After all, not every horse can keep his or her head while the Kenyan police are doing their sharpshooting demonstration within earshot. On the other hand, we're getting good practice with the avocado attacks.

Census Strangeness

Tomorrow is a holiday in Kenya. It's one of those strange, stealth holidays that just pop up because President Kibaki says "Make it so." (My favorite was Obama Day...the day after the U.S. election. I thought it was weird and wonderful that I had a holiday here in Kenya to celebrate Obama's historic victory, while it was business as usual in the U.S.)

This one is prompted by the start of Kenya's decennial census, a week-long exercise in counting Kenyans and gathering household data. The census started this evening at 6, and all the bars in the country have been ordered to close early so people get home.

There is a lot of anxiety about the census. For one thing, enumerators will be asking people to identify their tribe, which is a vexed question here, especially after the post-election violence of 2007/2008. For another, people don't like to open their doors to strangers at night!

I went grocery shopping and the supermarket was packed. People seemed to be stocking up, and the mood seemed poised between "getting ready to party" and "getting ready for Hurricane Hilda".

We'll see. I was hoping to take advantage and trailer J. up to Tigoni for a long, long ride in the gorgeous tea, but my riding buddy J2 has other plans. So I'll stick to plan A, my regular dressage lesson, and hope that the census is peaceful and successful.

Nice Butt!

OK, yes, that's a rude title.

But after hearing trainer after trainer go on and on over and over again about making our horses engage their hindquarters, and struggling at every stride to make them do it, isn't it nice to finally see and feel some results?

With J., what I'm feeling is a really nice forward walking stride without having to squeeze, cluck or tap every two seconds, more spring in her canter...and what I'm seeing is a really nice butt. Don't you think?

We had our first lesson in ages with R., who helps us with our jumping. It was great -- surprisingly so, considering what a b-tch J. has been out on our hacks recently. She was listening, picking up her right canter lead without trouble, going from walk to canter without a fuss, extending and collecting...

We didn't do any jumping, we just cantered over a little pole. This is an exercise that can make J. quite nervous, but the more often we do it, the more calmly she takes it. My hope is that one day she'll stop shutting her eyes for the scary bits...

Wednesday already?

How did that happen? There I was, enjoying my Sunday...and here I am, looking at a Wednesday afternoon.

Tomorrow I'll have a jumping lesson with R. It feels like a long time since the last one...I did take J. over a tiny little vertical last week, just to get over the psychological hump. I set up an exercise from Practical Horseman, adapted to our boma, which is quite small. I set up two ground poles on the long side of the boma separated by a slightly long five-stride distance, then a turn to a small jump with a ground pole 9 feet in front and another 10 feet behind.

The idea was to have J. canter the ground poles in five strides -- therefore going at a good forward pace -- then come around the corner to the jump. The exercise requires me to apply some gentle brakes to J.'s canter, and the pole 9 fee out requires J. to take off less than 9 feet from in front of the jump.

This is an excellent theory, and I thought it would be a cinch for J. I wanted to start our re-introduction to jumping with something that would make her feel calm, successful, and in control...

Not so much.

I was prepared for the possibility of her taking off from the far side of the pole, turning a little vertical into an Olympic long-jump. I was prepared for her to take off too close and chip the jump. But I really couldn't imagine another way to mess it up.

There is, though. It takes a combination of athleticism and wrong-headedness that not every horse has at his or her command. But J. managed it... taking off after planting her rear hooves ON TOP of the pole.

The feeling of the pole rolling out from under her hooves as she left the ground was, I think, a bit unnerving. A lot of tail swishing, ears back, head shaking. So we did it again, and this time I tried my favorite calming trick. I learned this from a trainer who only had time to give me one lesson before she left Kenya, but that one lesson just keeps on giving. The trick is simple: sing a completely idiotic, totally rhythmic song while riding the jumps.

(Our song is "The Itsy Bitsy Spider.")

It always makes me feel a fool, and yet it always takes up just enough of the part of my brain that worries and makes J. nervous that it settles us both right down. Try it!

We did, and the second try was perfect (mostly).

Riding Schedule, Ideal Version

It's been a great week for riding, if not for ideal horse behavior. Dressage lesson on Tuesday (Discouraging! Amazing how much we have both forgotten in just two months...), arena work and a few small jumps on Wednesday, day off Thursday, hacks on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Today's hack was particularly fine...My friend J. and I like to combine some bird-watching with our riding, and this afternoon, we saw a secretary bird. These are wonderful birds, a compelling combination of fierce and ridiculous. "A large bird, usually in pairs, hunting on foot with measured gate," according to my bird-bible Zimmerman.

This coming week, I'll try to slot in a weekly jumping lesson with R. from next door. He's a good teacher and J. likes him.

The first time we had a lesson together felt, at least for a few minutes, like a transcendent breakthrough. J. and I seemed to in synch to an amazing degree, proof at last that cross-species psychic communion is possible...

Sadly, I was deluded. It turned out that R. had trained J. when she was just emerging from her short, unhappy polo career. So she wasn't responding to some infinitisimal signal direct from my brain to hers - but to R.'s commands. It helps that he has a very particular way of calling out instructions..."Tuhhh---ROT" "Ahhnda ha-ALT."

Since then, R and I have worked out a code for our lessons, one that J hasn't cracked yet. I don't get that push-button response anymore, but at least I know the response I get is honestly earned.

Once we've found a time for our weekly jumping lesson, I'll have the outlines of my ideal riding schedule all set. Then comes the hard part, which is actually carrying out all of the elements of the schedule. Rain. Doctor's appointments. Plumbers. The list of things that can and will interfere is endless.

Now it really begins...

I consider this week to mark the official start of my "horse year"...my last year in Kenya, my golden opportunity to ride myself silly, and the subject of this blog. I'm back in Nairobi (for now), settling in after a long summer of travel. Meanwhile J. has undergone six weeks of enforced rest while undergoing her annual horse sickness vaccinations.

Our first show will be in late October, so right now the focus is on getting fit and remembering all the stuff we used to think we knew about being a horse and rider together.

We started out "get fit" campaign with a couple of nice hacks out with friends. J.'s stablemate, B. and her owner and my friend (who I'm going to have to call J2 since I'm on this initials kick) are frequent companions, and there are another four or five horses and riders on our road who join in as it suits.

From our barn, we need to walk down quite a steep but short hill on tarmac road before crossing the dreaded Limuru Road, a main thoroughfare out of Nairobi that is always bustling with lorries, matatus, busses, etc. Our horses, bless them, have learned to stand quietly amid the chaos until it's time to dash across when there's a gap in traffic -- though J. was quite startled one day when a matatu tout leaned out of his vehicle and patted her on the butt as he drove by. I think she was secretly flattered.

Once across Limuru Road, we have access to an area of small farm plots and random residential development served by dirt roads, and to a large tract of property that belongs to the Agha Khan. This property has been fenced as a prelude to being developed into (rumor has it) a medical training facility. But the work has been slow to begin and the fenced-in land is slowly going back to bush. It's lovely land, gently rolling, with a mixture of grass and brush. There's bird and animal life -- African Crowned Cranes and Blue Herons, sometimes bushbuck and mongoose (mongeese?) -- plus cows, goats, sheep, and donkeys and people and bicycles and dogs and transistor radios and preachers with megaphones.

In other words, a lively scene. I often wonder what my old horse Turbo would have made of it, given his mortal fear of plastic bags. Since we ride there a lot, J. usually takes it all in stride.

But this weekend, for whatever reason, she did not. We were riding in a group of five, cantering up a nice soft hill with the Agha Khan's electric fence on one side. Behind the fence was a stand of maize, quite tall, dry and RUSTLY. When we got to the top and pulled up, I noticed her giving the maize a suspicious look. "J. thinks there are gremlins in the maize," I told my companions...and suddenly, J. gave one of her patented "shy with a twist" moves, and off I came.

I am always surprised at how long it takes to fall off a horse. I'm amazed at how much thinking I can get done in that relatively short distance from seated on J's back to whatever undignified position I eventually take up on the ground.

This time, as I oozed earthwards, I managed to think the following: J's coat is looking nice and shiny...hold on to the reins, but just lightly, so if she takes off you don't break your finger again...please, J., if you do take off, don't try to cross the road by yourself...how many people are watching me do this right now?

Then I landed, quite comfortably, on my back, and congratulated myself on recognizing the use of the past perfect tense in the Swahili phrase being chanted by the nearby children: "Mzungu ameanguka! Mzungu ameanguka!" ("The white lady has fallen off! The white lady has fallen off!")

And J., bless her, did not take off but instead put her head down and started to graze. Which reminded me of the way our cat Lulu used to immediately start to groom herself with intense concentration whenever she broke something.

J. looks so innocent when she eats, doesn't she?

Montana: horse heaven (at least in July)

I saw a sign posted at a horse barn in Montana a couple of weeks ago: The Best Color for a Horse is Fat.

Apparently, the horses have taken this to heart. After a cool and rainy spring, the job of a horse in and around Bozeman these days seems to be to stand chest-high in gorgeous lush grass and just keep chewing. Right now, the grass is winning. The horses may disappear entirely in August, only the tips of their ears visible above the stalks.

Horse/Not a Horse

I'm always interested in the way horses respond to almost-horses that they encounter. My old horse Turbo had an intense fear and dislike of donkeys, and brought shame upon himself at his former boarding barn by beating up the pet donkey.

I've been lucky enough to ride in areas with game in Africa...this picture of zebras was taken from horseback in a game reserve in South Africa, during a six-day riding safari. I was riding a young horse who was so amazed at what he was seeing that he stood stock-still, so I was able to get a pretty clear picture. Though he stood so still, he was shaking all over. What was going through his mind?

J. and I did our first-ever cross-country course at a farm in Naivasha with loads of game. On a hack around the property the day before, J. had quite nearly lost her mind at her first close encounter with a giraffe, so I was worried about what might happen on course. No worries, though...she was so thrilled about the course that she just focused on her fences and went for it, paying no attention to the zebras, impala, etc. running off to either side. As for me, amid the terror of that first time, I had a distinctly fun feeling of being in the middle of an "Out of Africa" out-take.

Another riding landscape

A few times a year, the owner of a farm outside of Nairobi invites local riders to come and school over a cross-country course that runs through his property. It's in one of my favorite parts of the area around the city, Tigoni, which is mostly tea plantations.

This farm also produces organic lettuce, arugula, and herbs.

Tigoni is often damp and cool when the rest of the area is dry, and there is a lushness about the landscape that is very far from what most of us imagine when we think of Africa and Kenya. What will often remind you that you are NOT in, say, Virginia, is the sound of colobus monkeys commenting on your passage.

Riding in the land...

Across the road from where J. is stabled, there's a large area of shambas (small-holder farm plots) and behind that a large coffee plantation. We hack out there a couple of times a week, and for a place right on the edge of big-city Nairobi, it is an incredible landscape of greenery, wildlife, livestock and people.

When the rains have been good, low-lying areas turn into shallow seasonal ponds or marshes, which attract blue herons, African crowned cranes, and other birds.

Horse Dreams

I can tell I'm really missing my horse when I start having weird riding dreams. I love the ones where my horse starts to fly... Is that the best 8-year-old-girl fantasy or what?

Last night's version started out like a pretty standard horse-show anxiety dream...driving to a show somewhere, hauling a two-horse trailer, running late. That feeling of rushing to tack up, rushing to get on, rushing to warm up, is one I dread but seem doomed to repeat, in dreams and in life.

I pulled up at the show grounds...and it turned out not to be, strictly speaking, a horse show. Some people where riding horses. But my friend A., an awesome dressage rider, was mounted on a fine long-horned cow, preparing to ride the Novice B test.

The little pony-clubbers were doing some kind of complicated relay with flags on long sticks, on sturdy but muddy sheep.

When I pulled down the ramp on the trailer, inside I found, not my mare J., but a zebroid (zebra-horse cross). These really do exist (see photo), though I've never heard of people riding them...they have been used for packing loads and hauling wagons.



So I tacked her up. She was fatter than the fattest pony, cross and opinionated. She wasn't wearing any shoes and she simply refused to accept the bit. This being a dream, I was still able to finish and mount up, but I was nervous that someone would notice there was no bit.

When we rode up to the warm-up ring, the only comment from a show official was to ask me why I wasn't wearing a hairnet. (Since I've started riding and sometimes competing, I've found myself buying a lot of weird gear, but for some reason it's owning hairnets that seems strangest to me. I think it's because the only other time I ever wore them was when I scraped plates at my school cafeteria as my work-study job back in 10th grade.)

When the class started, the Z. and I found ourselves in the ring with a couple of really nice-looking horses and one camel. The judges asked for a canter, and the camel took off at speed. My Z. followed close behind, and then in convenient dream fashion, the arena fence disappeared and we found ourselves galloping across a grassy plain, being left further and further behind by the camel....

There's no resolution to this dream, of course. I woke disappointed and hope that the next one I have will reunite me with J. rather than some other hoofed animal.

Fitness when horseless?

As I cope with my six weeks of no horse, I am trying to stay fit for riding. And I'm wondering how J. is doing on that front...she is a little bit of a hard keeper, and when I first got her she was skinny. (See photo!)

By the time I left for the states in June, after more than a year together, she was looking GOOD. Nice neck. Nice butt! Even, sometimes, a nice smile. Plus that shiny avocado oil treatment coat.

Now I worry we'll both have a lot of make-up work to do in August. We may need our own version of bootcamp fitness, someone to yell at us while we work our abs, glutes, cores, etc.

So, right now, I'm trying to avoid the worst by running (about 3 miles four times a week), doing push-ups (I'm up to 20!) and crunches (except I hate crunches, so I'm not going to tell how many).

Are there secrets to staying in shape for what is, after all, a pretty weird and specific form of athletic endeavor...especially after 50? Would love to hear from other riders! And how do you keep your horses fit when you can't ride?

The up side of not riding?

My riding life is on hold right now while I visit the U.S. and while my horse J. undergoes the annual ordeal of her horse sickness vaccination. I didn't know about horse sickness before I started riding in Kenya -- it's a terrible illness, often fatal, and the vaccine is no joke either. It's a live vaccine, and horses receive two injections three weeks apart. For three weeks after each injection, it is important that they avoid raising their internal temperature. So no riding above a walk.

Every year I get a little frustrated about the inevitable loss of fitness for J. and, for me, the inevitable loss of that fragile sense that I know what I am doing on horseback. Somehow, after this longish break from riding, every fence seems higher, every shy out on a hack seems bigger, my legs seem to swing like pendulums (pendula?), and that lovely sense of being deeply, securely in the saddle evaporates.

But I need to remind myself that J. and I both need our vacations. It's easier for me to be here in the U.S. visiting family and enjoying reconnecting with friends when I am not also thinking, "I could be galloping through the coffee fields right now." And yes, I am that petty. But the fact is, the best J. and I could hope for if I were in Kenya right now would be a quiet walk down our road, keeping pace with the dog walkers and the moms pushing strollers. A pleasure, certainly, but one that can easily be deferred.

As for J., when I'm able to keep to my ideal riding schedule (5 to 6 rides a week, including 1 dressage lesson, 1 jumping lesson, 2 to 3 hacks and 1 to 2 schools -- an ideal I manage to achieve at least once in a millenium), I'm pretty sure that there are days when she sees me coming and the thought in her mind would not translate to "Hooray! More work!"

So, it's kind of nice to think of her loafing around grazing in the boma with her best friend B., or snacking on the avocados that are falling from the trees right now (and let me say that free access to avocados makes for a very shiny coat and some very interesting bright green slobber that will challenge your laundry skills to the max).

Back story, part 1

Who was the first horse you ever loved?

I admit, I'm easy...I have loved almost every horse I've ever really known. Brady, a mare "of a certain age" that I half-leased when I first started getting seriously sucked into this horse thing. Zippy the wonder horse with his small brain, large appetite. But for a lasting relationship, I think of Turbo. He was in his 20s, I was in my 40s. Which made it a December/September relationship, I guess. He was a "gift horse," in that he had been given to a friend of mine and I for free (I hear you laughing, yes, I know, if there is no such thing as a free lunch, there is TRULY no such thing as a free horse).

Three years ago, I had to leave Turbo behind when I moved to Nairobi with my family as what is called a "trailing spouse." Gotta love that label! Like the tail on a comet, following my shooting star...right.

So it was great to discover a lively riding scene in Nairobi. An AFFORDABLE riding scene, at least for those of us accustomed to spending a lot more on shoes for our horses than shoes for ourselves. Right now, I pay about $250 a month for full board, $15 for a visit from the farrier...this is one-half to one-third DC area prices.

The situation, then, was this: in a new country, not working, no work permit, and cheap horse life on offer. What would you have done?

The starting box

One of my favorite classes to enter in horse shows in Kenya is called "Team Gamblers". I'd never heard of it before, though it may be common all over the world for all I know. Horse-rider teams of three -- chosen in some wildly non-transparent manner by the people who do these sorts of things -- start out in a square box inside the show-jumping arena. The box is defined by ground poles. The horses often don't know each other and may not like each other. Inside the box, the origin of the phrase "in a fine lather" becomes perfectly plain.

Outside the box is an array of obstacles of different heights and with different freak-out factors. Fake Flowers! Painted Bricks! Scary Stripes! Each has a point value. A bell rings, and the first horse comes out of the box and starts jumping as many obstacles with as high a point value as the rider thinks possible, at the fastest speed the pair can manage. The obstacles may be jumped in either direction and more than once. The bell rings again, horse #2 comes out of the box, horse #1 returns, horse #3 has a mild nervous breakdown while remaining in the box on pain of disqualification. The bell rings again. Horse #3 LEAPS out of the box and tears around like a mad thing (with luck, some productive jumping gets slotted in). Horse #2 returns to the box. Horse #1 tries to bite a chunk out of Horse #2, just for something to do. The final bell rings. Horse #3 crosses an imaginary finish line (or forgets to cross it, disqualifying the team). The team with the highest point total wins.

I love it because it is everything that my late-life approach to riding is not, most of the time. It is not cautious. It does not count strides. It does not think neatness counts. It's all about speed, height, and adrenaline. And I love it because it sums up the joyfully competitive spirit of Kenyan horses and riders.

Why ride? It's a question I ask myself all the time, and I think one of the answers is that it's a way to put deliberate danger into life. Which is not a very good reason on the face of it, but seems to be necessary for me. Maybe my chestnut mare is the balding accountant's red Ferrari or the tenured professor's racing boat...Well, let's not go there.