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.

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?

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.

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.