I’m a “closeted” hat kind of guy. Which means, I love hats but I look like a peacock in them. I have five different type of hats which all hang in my bedroom like abandoned tools in a tool shade.
I have this particular hat, a gift from Sarova Group, which I fancy. Kick-ass hat. It’s one of those bush/safari hats that you can fold on the flaps. It’s very odiero this hat and quite pretentious for a nyeudhi like me to rock anywhere, much less the city. I don’t see myself wearing it to a bar for instance, or a cocktail do because I can’t think of an easier way to lose friends, or face
But pulling off a hat is not an easy thing. It’s not like wearing socks. With a hat you got to have the right shape of head (a general rarity), you got to have the right attitude and you have to truly believe that you make that hat look good, never the other way round. Oh, and you can’t stick a feather on your hat. You just can’t, gentlemen.
But the thing with hats is that it doesn’t matter how tragic you look in them; wear it constantly and people will start saying you look great it in because, really, most people don’t believe in anything for too long. So, these same breeds of people will always lift the hat off your head and try it on themselves because you made it look good and they imagine they can too. Fortunately, they never do.
Here is an open secret; not too deep down I’m a very pretentious fellow. So what will do in my moments of pomposity? I will dust my safari hat and rock it because it speaks to my utter lack of self-preservation. But even more ostentatiously it says I don’t give a toss.
This is called The Elephant Bar, it’s where Elephants come to have a drink (water) and meet friends. Pretty much like Tamasha, only nobody will lace your drink.
So Friday I was rocking that hat somewhere in the heartland of Borana ranch, a sprawling 35,000 hectares at the edge of Lewa Conservancy in Laikipia, a land teeming with about 22 Lions, Giraffes, Buffaloes, Cheetahs, Leopards, Zebras, tons of small animals, hyenas, elands, impalas, a million birds, jackals, frogs, about 3,000 head of cattle, tens of horses…I could go on, but I know you guys need to get back to your emails. Anyway, I was there on the invite of the owners, some odiero ranchers who spend their days flying small planes over the plains, fussing over elephant corridors and running one of the best lodges I have ever been to this year; Borana Lodge. Look it up, it will blow off your hat.
Anyway. So I’m in this corny hat of mine, pompously cocked to one side of my face because Frank Sinatra once said, “Cock you hat, because angles are attitudes,” but also because I’m blocking the ruthless Borana sun.
We are looking for lions. Once in Shompole (it since closed down. Tragic how senseless politics screws up communities) we looked for Lions at night with our huge car-mounted floodlights bringing day to whichever area it hit. It was surreal when we finally found them headed to hunt; strong, arrogant, confident and hungry. Seeing a pride of lions going to hunt stirs your loins. No, it really does.
In Borana, we stumbled upon about 12 of them chilling out under a shrub, just shootin’ the breeze. You know, just waiting for dusk to fall so they can go out and look for some Zebra ass. Lions are cool like that.
Now, I’ve been lucky to have seen countless lions in my lifetime. But they don’t really move me; seriously they don’t, especially when they just lie there sniffing each other. Here’s how bad it is; lions sleep 17hrs of the 24hrs in a day, Richard, our cool guide told us. 17 hrs! I shook my head sombrely. You know, come to think of it, while we all sat in the van looking at the Lions snooze under the shrub I thought the scene looked uncannily like watching the Kenyan parliament in session, only in parliament there isn’t any spine.
The back view of my cottage. If you, for whatever reason (bad swimming costume, hanging belly, hairy back), are too shy to use the main pool, you can use the one in your cottage. The only people who will be staring will be elephants and they are the last people to judge bad bodies.
So anyway, as we are busy gawking at the lions and their 13-month old cubs, a wind blows off my corny hat from my ill-shaped head. And guess where my hat chooses to land of all the places it could land in the 35,000-acre park? It lands a few feet from the pride.
Now one of the cubs (the more fashion forward of them all), a cocky little one with broad shoulders wakes up and trots over to my hat and sniffs it cautiously, like he is able to tell if I’m wearing something by Burberry or something. Then, while we watch, he sort of starts playing with it; he carries it in his mouth and makes like he is ripping it apart, only he rips apart my soul. The cub, which by the way doesn’t look like a cub at all, then drops it down disinterestedly, looks up (at me, I swear) and for a fleeting moment, we dare each other to see who blinks first. But his stare, I realised, was different; it seemed to say: “What are you going to do about me spitting in your stupid hat, bitch?”
Let me digress, a tad. Last year I attended this tedious birthday party for a friend. You know a party is tedious when you see a press photographer taking pictures for some society page in the newspaper. So anyway, in the spirit of mingling and being socially correct, I happened to have started talking to this guy who, after exchanging three words, struck me as rich. Not wealthy, rich. There are two ways of telling a wealthy guy from a rich guy in “this our Nairobi.” (I can never get enough of hearing that phrase, “in this our Nairobi,”). The difference between these two is that the rich guys will want you to use his M-banking to show you his bank statement while the wealthy guys will try and keep it under their hats (oh, pun bliss) mostly, unsuccessfully.
Anyway, the rich guy is rich all right. New money. I know it’s new money because 1) he can’t shut up about it and 2) he had the nuts to show up in a razor sharp suit (an Ozwald Boateng, don’t even pretend you’ve heard of that designer) on a Sato 3) has too many designers on him; from his specs, his shirt, his phone and shoes. He’s in the category of those folk who feel the need to define their style by wearing brands. The guys who will wear Levis not because it’s anything other than it’s a Levis. And they are a dime a dozen in this town, those and the wannabees who wear knock-offs from some warehouse on Enterprise road.
Richie, lets call this cat, gets talking about his business and how the sky is a very low limit for him. It’s obvious he’s doing very well…and not making bones about it. Now, it’s easy to resent this kind of a person a little, especially if you struggling to stay afloat like Zulu is. It’s much easier (and gratifying), though, to hold him in a headlock, choke him until your see the whites of his eyes and relieve him off his Tissot. But you chill out because it’s not even his fault that he’s doing better than you are, it really isn’t, it’s just the way die rolled.
Anyway, so Richie is really banging on about how loaded he is. Talking about big-ass money, talking about bigger-ass deals in the pipelines all while putting away some expensive tipple like Jack Daniels Silver (it was a buy-your-own drink party, which are parties thrown by struggling middle-class show-offs who just have to throw a friggin’ party in a snazzy club when they turn a new age only so that they can make A LOT of noise about it on their Facebook albums).
I truly resented Richie, not because he was rich, but because he rubbed it in my face and messed up my drink further (I was on some cheap red wine from a box; Drostyhof or something dreadful like that. It’s truly The Animal Farm, folk). Richie just had to twist the knife.
Back to Borana ranch.
Breakfast: I was bored as I waited for the main breakfast, this whole fruit business doesn’t help when you have a small hangie. Bring out the bacon, Mustapha!
Borana ranch is owned by the Dyer family. Tony Dyer is 8o-something old chap who owns the ranch that also consists of some two very high-end lodges. The Dyer family also owns more high-end properties, flower farms and some real estate. Since Tony’s knees can’t allow him to run around the ranch anymore, one of his son’s – Mike – runs Borana ranch. Mike and his wife built Borana lodge from nothing. They drew the plan on the sand and built it sorely on ingenuity and passion.
Some perspective: A room in Borana costs the average rent of a small one bedroom in Kile. There is a helipad in the premises where guests land on, or a private airstrip in the ranch. 80% of their clientele pitch up by chartered planes or choppers. Urma Thurman has stayed there, so has Steve Jobs and Richard Branson amongst the big suits.
And Mike is no small fry. Mike is the kind of guy who will tell his pal who lives in Karen they meet in Upperhill and he will hop into his Cesna just as his pal is leaving Karen, and he will be waiting for him in Upperhill as his pal struggles through Ngong road traffic. That journey will cost him 25K in fuel. Your rent, Browneyed Girl, your rent.
These folk are not rich, Gang. These folk are wealthy.
Mike’s baby. I think she’s sexy.
So on our last day, we get on horsebacks and for an hour we trot to Ngare Ndare house, where Mike’s parents live. I expected a mansion set on a foundation of dead presidents. I expected to see some classic vehicles from the 70’s in a shade, vehicles you heat water to wash. I expected to find bone china on table and gallant chandelier that glow with a million diamonds. I expected to get lost in their Persian rags and listen to Beethoven from a 1934 gramophone, the only of its kind known in the Africa.
But their home is simple. Surprisingly single. Shockingly simple. It’s so simple I gawp. But it’s quaint and homely. A warm home. Most homes with money are cold; you feel it through the walls. Rose, Mike’s mom is warm like hell and she serves all of us lemon juice from a cute jug. We find Tony seated on the veranda, clad in a simple Pringle sweater, beige pants and some well-worn shoes, studiously laced.
And he stands up to say hallo to us. The old man stands up to say hallo to us.
Look, he doesn’t have to, Gang, first because he’s over 80yrs old and second because he’s received much more significant visitors in his home. But he gets up on his feet because even in old age, even though his hearing is shot and he wears a hearing aid in his right ear, he still clings onto his good manners. And he isn’t hankering for PR either because he doesn’t need the publicity anymore than he needs a Rupu voucher.
But he stands up.
And for me, the moment that wealthy old man struggled to his feet to say hallo, I choked on the overwhelming respect I found for him.
The humble abode.
And he is an extraordinary gentleman, the last of his kind, really: He still writes books at his age and he can remember 1945 as if it was yesterday. He follows English football more keenly than those noisy weekend radio sports analysts. He talks about the Cold War and details about the history of Kenya and the ranch with a crisp eloquence. He is polite and he humbles us with his effusive good mannerism and his unbending modesty. And when we are leaving he stands up again, stoically, to bid us goodbye with a firm handshake and a wrinkled smile.
I was scheduled to interview his son, Mike at sundown, and we met at Pride Rock, that rock which inspired the movie the Lion King (actually the creators stayed at Borana lodge when conceptualizing that movie), for drinks and watched the sun sink into earth to our left. Sipping single malt whisky off that rock while you watch the sun expunge itself is what inspires those National Geographic boys and girls to describe Africa as the land where “men go to be born afresh.”
And Mike was a chip off the old block; witty, amiable, gracious and so damn down to earth.
These ponies in their compound. Ponies look great, when they aren’t kicking you in the teeth.
Here is the thing; most interviews become a blur after some time. Names start sounding the same; characters start falling into predictable little boxes and the sound bites start sounding like something off a broken record. I love what I do but sometimes I go through them while I count sheep.
But interviewing Mike was something different; it was like running into this old book that you can’t believe you went through life without reading.
Mike has lead in illustrious life; he has motorbiked from the UK to Kenya with his wife on his back. He and his wife designed a lodge that featured in Architecture Digest basically from dreaming and believing. He has worked as a cowboy in Montana, or some place like that in the states. He frequently goes for adventure on horseback, ridding into wilderness with his wife, camping and making meals off a small stove under the African night. And whenever he flies to Nairobi, he has his “airport car” a Vokswagen Beetle he talks about like you would talk about a faithful friend who has always had your back. Mike likes to fly under the fray and hype.
He says money is only as good as long as it touches other people positively. And he says, “please” to his employees. Mike lives his life modestly but passionately. A man who is wringing out the juice out of his life. I interviewed him for an hour and when the interview ended, I felt a sense of loss because I was sure I didn’t ask all the questions I should have.
But even more crucially, I desperately wanted Richie to meet Mike.
This story is important because I felt like I got something from it. Most interviews make you happy, or tired or just glad it’s over. Hardly do they ever make you feel like you are a better person after; sure, you learn a few things, yes, you get greater lessons, yes, you feel privileged, yes. But hardly do they make you feel like you are a better person, like interview this chap made me feel.
And the only reason I’m sharing this with you is because I pray you pick something from it, even if it’s my annoying typos.
This is the view God looks at when he steps out on his balcony.
I have 12 pages of notes from the interview. I read them on Sunday night, just before I turned in. I have written four intros of his story in my head, none of which seems to capture the poignancy of Mike’s character. And now, as I sit here, it’s occurred to me that I’m afraid to write his story, not because I can’t but because I’m afraid that some of his goodness will slip through the cracks of my journalistic incompetence.