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?