photography

Unexpected with bells, sticks and hankies at the Sweeps Festival

There is much that is unexpected about Rochester’s annual Sweeps Festival, held every May Day for the last thirty four years. It is of course a re-make of a much more ancient festival – one at least 400 years old, and that in turn was probably a re-make of various spring-time rites from distant antiquity. As you scan down the photos you may notice a plethora of cultural references, some of them wholly inexplicable, but all thrown in – in the name of jolly good English fun.

But first a bit of real history, at least to explain the ‘sweeps’ bit of the proceedings. In Britain chimney sweeping was once big business. Until the Climbing Boys’ Act 1868 which made it illegal, children as young as four were employed by Master Sweeps to clean inside the nation’s chimneys. This practice was even officially sanctioned. The Master was paid by parish officials to take on climbing boys (and sometimes girls) as indentured apprentices. They then underwent a 7-year training, after which, if they survived, they could become journeymen sweeps and work for a Master of their own choosing. The children were usually workhouse orphans and paupers, and the aim was to launch as many of them into the trade and up sooty flues so as to reduce their cost to the parish. It was a filthy, dangerous and vicious business, and you can read more about it HERE.

May Day was traditionally the only day of the year that chimney sweeps had as a holiday. Here in Kent the day’s festivities traditionally began on Blue Bell Hill, at Chatham just outside Rochester (a hill also known for its Neolithic chambered tombs). At dawn the merrymakers would awaken the giant Jack-in-the-Green who would then accompany them in the parade.

And here he is, recreated anew – the ‘tree’ between two ‘sweeps’:

There are of course obvious references here to the Green Man, the Green Knight and various symbols of tricksterism and fertility. There are also similar festivals involving tree-figures in Europe, particularly Switzerland, and it is possible that some of the notions associated with these carnivals go back to Stone Age times.

Welded onto all of this is the ancient English pastime of Morris Dancing, a form of folk dancing that has many regional expressions, and dates back to at least the 15th century. It had a great revival at the start of the 20th century when folklorists such as Cecil Sharp set about documenting traditional dancing and music. Below are some ‘traditional’ looking Morris Men. They are members of one of the sixty Morris bands that take part every year at the Sweeps’ Festival.

And then there are the black face Morris dancers, the Goths, the Fabulous Fezheads who sand dance, Morris dancers from the US, all women groups, clog and longsword dancers. There are even hints of S & M and nosferatu, or was that just my take on things. In any event, please enjoy the cultural concoction.

Ailsa’s Travel Theme: unexpected

Vulcanicity ~ Welcome to the hot zone

I have long had a fearful fascination with volcanoes – probably ever since, as a young child in the 1950s, I saw a newsreel item of Mount Etna erupting. It seemed like a living nightmare. I remember especially the unstoppable flows of boiling lava that rolled over everything in their path. Even in places where it had cooled I seem to remember people who walked on it found their shoes smouldering. It was perhaps my first apprehension of the fact that the earth could do things that mankind was incapable dealing with. I remember having a dream afterwards where the ground beneath my feet kept cracking open into ever widening fissures: my first anxiety dream perhaps.

With this in mind, you will understand how very deeply impressed I was when I first set eyes on Africa’s Great Rift Valley.

NASA non-copyright image

Here, on the surface of the earth, we have a 4,000 mile chain of connected fissures that extends from Lebanon in the Middle East to Mozambique in south east Africa. It comprises the Jordan Rift Valley, Red Sea Rift and the East African Rift, which itself divides into eastern and western arms with Lake Victoria Nyanza in between. The entire system has been described as a world wonder, the biggest rupture in the planet’s land surface, and the only geological feature that can be seen clearly from the moon. The East African Rift of course includes the great ice-topped volcanoes of Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya that are mere remnants of their formerly gargantuan fiery selves.

So however you look at it, moon- or otherwise, the Great Rift is definitely a case of EXTREME geology. All that seismic shunt and shift. And it is still happening and at this very moment. One day the Horn of Africa and littoral East Africa will be an island.

The East African Rift is thought to have begun to pull apart around 40 million years ago. Scientists surmise that the environmental changes associated with fissuring may have had a significant impact on the evolution of humankind. So far, very many of the earliest fossils of (potential) human ancestors have been found in the Rift – Olduvai Gorge, and in the vicinity of Lakes Baringo, Turkana and Omo. On the other hand, this could simply be a reflection of the decades of systematic searching in these areas, instigated largely by the Leakey dynasty of palaeontologists. But whether a good case of careful looking or not, I’m still prepared to believe that humans could have evolved here.

The photograph at the start of this post is of the old volcano, Longonot. It lies in the Rift between Nairobi and Naivasha in Kenya. In the next shot you can see it from Lake Naivasha (hippo added for purposes of scale Smile ). Part of this lake is also formed within a submerged crater.

One key side effects of volcanic activity is highly fertile soil. In Kenya and Tanzania the Rift Valley floor supports the Serengeti grasslands that in turn are home to millions of herbivores, their following of big cat predators, and the whole wonderful species-rich eco-system. These plains also have long been the grazing grounds of the best known nomadic pastoralists on the planet, the Maasai.

Before the British invaded East Africa in the late nineteenth century (intent on setting up the Imperial British East Africa Company) and concluded that any land not occupied by people at that point in time was EMPTY and thus FREELY AVAILABLE, the Maasai ranged over vast tracts of the Rift grassland system. It is believed that their ancestors moved out from the Horn of Africa about four thousand years ago.

This means that the Maasai lived a life that suited them and apparently with little cost to the environment for 4,000 years before the British came along and herded them into a reserve where the land is least fertile and watered for human purposes, and otherwise known as the Maasai Mara. Europeans then set about destroying the plains’ wildlife on a breathtakingly ugly scale. The invaders, or their activities also became vectors for deadly disease – rinderpest that decimated native cattle, and smallpox and syphilis that took their toll on the human populations.

Smallholder farms at Escarpment just north of Nairobi. Mount Longonot beyond.

Once the British had staked their claim in British East Africa, the Bantu farming communities that inhabited the higher hillside zones of Kenya were also enclosed in Reserves. The occupants could only leave to work for Europeans. The justification for creating reserves with designated boundaries (and they were quite large areas) was to protect tribal land holdings from the incoming white settlers.

African farmers, being the successful cultivators they had been for several millennia, were naturally inhabiting the best and most covetable land. So in this sense, the British administration had a point. The early settlers were British aristocrats like Lord Delamere and the sons of the Earl of Enniskillen, and thus the kind of men who expected to own vast acreages and begin farming/ranching on an industrial/landed gentry scale.

Meanwhile from 1896-1902, and as a result of military paranoia of epic proportions, the British had built a very expensive 600-mile railway from Mombasa to Lake Victoria. It was called the Lunatic Line even at the time of its building. But as the strategic objective receded in importance during the early 20th century, so the Colonial Office needed settlers – well-heeled, gentlemen of means who would grow produce for export and so help pay for the railway.

First page of Lord Cranworth’s A Colony in the Making: Or Sport and Profit in British East Africa, Macmillan 1912. A guidebook and general sales pitch to attract gentleman settlers. (Out of copyright).

Thus, in the wake of the adventure-aristocrats came retired military men, among them individuals who were variously set on nation-building, knocking the natives into shape and, in the process, getting rich from flax, ostrich feathers and coffee. The country’s fine shooting and fishing were definite lures, and made much of in the publicity brochures sent out from British East Africa. Other attractions included the notion of plentiful cheap farm labour and house servants, and thus the preservation of social status that was already well on the wane for the middle classes back in Blighty.

But now we come to the rub. Or in fact two rubs. Firstly, when the monsoon winds are blowing in the right direction, Kenya has the most benign climate imaginable, providing two rainy seasons, and thus two and sometimes three growing seasons for some crops. The elevated plateau of Central Province in particular, and its Aberdares highlands are rarely too hot. The beauty of the great forests suggested Scotland or Wales rather than Africa to the newcomers. They set about building mini-baronial lodges and laying out English lawns and rose beds.

But then comes the other rub. The soil. As I’ve said, volcanic soils are very fertile, but they are also very fragile. Wholesale clearance of trees and bush will quickly create desert. The late, great Kenyan environmentalist, Wangari Maathai, has maintained that felling deeply rooting forest trees ultimately leads to desertification for a whole range of reasons.

The forests not only attract rain but the trees shelter, stabilize and feed the soil (many tropical species fix nitrogen). Most importantly, she pointed out, the deep roots open up underground aquifers to water the land.

Traditional farmers of course made gardens within the forest rather than large fields. They cleared trees certainly, but they did not clear all trees. Some had sacred meaning, like the wild fig, and were protected. Others were valued for cropping purposes – for animal fodder, medicine, bee forage etc.

When the old colonials set out for Africa on a cash-cropping spree, full of the notions that they knew best how to farm, they singularly failed to understand that indigenous peoples, far from being ‘undeveloped’, had very good reasons for doing things the way they did them. Their objectives were more about living well than getting rich.

Pre-colonial accounts by explorers and missionaries show that the Bantu peoples were very successful farmers. They planned their planting to take into account the possible vagaries of climate. For instance, drought resistant millet might be the mainstay crop, and cultivated on the drier soils in their territory. Squashes and beans would be grown near stream beds, and water-hungry maize would be the risk crop, planted on a river bank on the off chance that seasonal floods would be small enough not to wash the crop away, but good enough to provide a bonus to the annual harvest.

The other important contingency depended on kinship and clan ties. As the Bantu communities moved out across the African continent over many centuries, pioneering into new territories as population growth or failing soil fertility dictated, networks of clan relationships became extended over quite large territories. If drought, disease or invaders struck, people would take their possessions and seek refuge with distant relatives until the threat had passed.

Pastoralists like the Maasai also relied on being able to move over large distances to secure grazing for their herds in times of drought. But once people were confined to reserves, bound by European constructs of land ownership, they could not move. Land in the Native Reserves where people farmed thus became overcrowded, degraded and overgrazed. Under colonial rule Africans were not allowed to acquire fresh land. This was one of the chief reasons for the uprising in 1950s Kenya when the Land and Freedom Army (dubbed Mau Mau) went to war against British rule.

Then there were the colonial agriculture officers trying to dictate the way the people on the Reserves grew their crops, pressing for mono-culture rather than the traditional way of mixing crops which helps to fool insect pests and utilizes advantages of companion planting.

As we left Kenya in 2000 I was interested to learn that some European agricultural aid project was actually advocating that smallholder farmers (which means most Kenyans) should use ‘kitchen-garden’ planting techniques to reduce crop pest damage and/or the need for pesticides. It had only taken a hundred years for outsiders to teach Africans what they had known all along, but doubtless been told to forget in the interim because their methods were considered primitive.

Sometimes the hypocrisy of rich world tinkering is enough to make this particular writer’s blood boil up in seismic fury. Time to cool down with a view of snow-topped Kilimanjaro. Who’d have thought it: ice on a volcano. When in the 1840s German explorers and missionaries, Johann Ludwig Krapf and Johannes Rebmann, out exploring from their Mombasa mission, claimed to have seen snow-capped mountains at the Equator, no one back home believed them. Thought they were barking. There’s a lot, we outside Africa do not know about this vast, extraordinary continent even though its nations provide us with so many of our essential raw materials, fairly and otherwise; mostly otherwise…

Flickr Comments Tagged ‘V’

Lust to rust: is it a sign?

Is it a portent, a glimpse of the future where the ubiquitous mall/consumer-outoftown-outlet is no more. Gone. No more shops. For here we have a ‘fossilized’ supermarket trolley, aka shopping cart, its erstwhile frame decomposed in a muddy creek beside a Strood retail park. These sorry remains were caught in a happenstance moment – after shopping of course – and just as the tidal River Medway was on the ebb. Poor old trolley. No more two-for-one thrill; no more down-the-aisles rush to load up the sugar-laden cargo. And so, ex-trolley, may Mammon bless your squeaky, little wheels – now sadly dissolved in Kentish coastal effluent…

Cee’s Odd Ball Challenge

Daily Post Photo Challenge: Split-second story

Congo Super Highway

I’ve been on the raid again for these shots for Cee’s watery challenge. They’re from the Team Leader’s photo archive of his Africa overland trip, and were taken from the deck of one of the huge Congo ferries that ply the treacherously shifting waterway between DR Congo’s capital Kinshasa and the port town of Kisangani, a thousand kilometres inland.

This vast waterway is one of Africa’s super highways. In a land with few roads or other amenities, the Congo River not only provides the main means of travelling across the country, but is also a continuous marketing opportunity for local farmers, fishermen and traders who deal in just about every imaginable commodity.

The traders tie up their pirogues alongside the ferry. They come to trade with passengers and to hitch a ride. At times the ferry looks more like a floating city than a river craft.

The river of course means far more than transport and trade to the Congolese who live beside it. It provides fish to eat for one thing. More crucially, it is the main source of drinking, cooking and washing water: in every sense a river of life.

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Water

Last Warrior Standing?

I have written about this magnificent Welsh sculpture in more detail in an earlier post, Warrior Wind-Singer of Llyn, but I thought he/she deserved another viewing. This brave Celtic guardian surveys Cardigan Bay from the cliff top above Plas Glyn-y-Weddw, Llanbedrog, on the Llyn Peninsula. It is the work of local craftsmen Berwyn Jones and Huw Jones and replaces two earlier figureheads that met there doom there by fire and corrosion. It is known as the Iron Man of Mynydd Tir y Cwmwd, but as I say, I think it could also be a woman. After all, the Celts had fierce women like Buddug, known more widely today as Boudicca. She was the warrior queen of the Iceni, who took on the invading Romans.

I find the figure very moving, the remnant twist of sinew and ligament after bone and flesh have been weathered away. In the spaces between, the steel armature gathers the sea winds and sings. A metaphor, perhaps, for Welsh culture – the bardic verses and sea-sounds of the language that outsiders find so hard to get their tongues round. And for those of you want to hear some Welsh being spoken and see some superlative Welsh drama produced by BBC Cymru Wales, then look out for Hinterland, (Y Gwyll in Welsh), the so-called Celtic Noir detective series. It is currently showing on the UK’s BBC, but it deserves to go world-wide.

The winding cliff path to the Iron Man

For more twist and metal follow the links:

Daily Post Weekly Photo Challenge: Twist

Ailsa’s Travel Challenge: Metal

Apple Blossom Time

I confess that I posted this photo the other day, along with several other shots taken up at the allotment. But then I thought it deserves to be seen again, and on its own, and without me blethering on. So here you have it: apple blossom ~ what could be more lovely?

Ailsa’s Travel Theme: blossom

Rooti-toot-toot ~ spring at the allotment up close and vegetal

On the move on the Congo River

A Word A Week: Boat (up the Congo)

Gorilla Guards in Virunga

Here are the links for other bloggers’ photos and stories:

Ailsa’s travel challenge: river

DP weekly photo challenge: on the move

Rooti-toot-toot, it’s spring at the allotment: up close and vegetal

Well the old shed has made it through another year. A couple of bits have fallen off, but last year’s application of internal bracing by the Team Leader, aka Graham, has kept its tendency to list in an easterly direction in check. Would that we all had such a bracing. Over the winter it housed a poor mummified mouse, and snails still go to roost in there. I’m not showing you the inside, though. You definitely do not want to see in there.

Instead, here is the ancient greengage tree with its delicate blossom. Already I’m wondering if it will give us some fruit this year. Greengages are notoriously temperamental, and after the magnificent crop in my first year of allotmenting that had us, and all our friends and relations, dribbling with delight over bucket loads of luscious harvest, it has borne very little. That was seven years ago. Maybe this year is the year then.

There are loads of jobs to do, not least digging. The endlessly wet autumn and winter meant that winter digging was impossible, so there has been much to catch up on. Meanwhile the weeds are literally having a field day, which makes this the the season of dandelion beheading. (Sorry, dandelions). They are sprouting up all along the paths between everyone’s plots, and I’m afraid I find great satisfaction in slicing off these cheery faces with my strimmer. Their replacements are anyway there the next day, beaming vigorously.

Then there is the comfrey forest to manage. This plant I crop and cherish. You cannot have too much of it, and it obligingly grows itself in a huge clump beside the shed. If you cut it down after flowering, it will grow again and again during the summer.

Comfrey, as I have mentioned before, is the organic gardener’s dream plant. It comes in other shades, pink to purple through blue. Its ability to mine otherwise inaccessible nutrients from the soil (dynamic accumulation I believe this is called) and repurpose them in its foliage make it an endless source of cost-free fertilizer. It is one of the reasons why you can’t look in my shed. I do my brewing in there. And no. It’s not what you think.

For those who missed an earlier post on this, I stuff old compost bags with the comfrey’s top growth, seal them with clothes pegs, cut a hole in the corner of each bag, and prop it over a bucket and wait. In the warmth of the shed the vegetation soon rots down, giving out a dark and evil looking liquid that collects in the buckets. This stuff is pretty smelly, although nowhere near as pungent as the slimy residue left in the bag, which then ends up on the compost heap. The liquid I decant into old plastic bottles, and use as a feed through the growing season. It is 3 times richer in potassium that farmyard manure, but it must be diluted 1 part comfrey essence to 15 parts water.

The blurry bee above would not stay still for the shot, but that’s another good thing about comfrey. Bees like it. As I took this, I spotted at least 4 different kinds: a honey bee and three bumbles of varying liveries and sizes. Having written of the dire things that are happening to bees, it’s heartening to see so many at the allotment doing their work. Thank you, bees.

The mild winter has meant that many crops simply kept going without dying back. Yesterday I noticed that my globe artichokes have already made globes almost big enough to eat. In May? What is going on? But thank you, artichokes.

The Swiss Chard has been magnificent too and kept us going through the winter with fresh new leaves. It is only now going to seed. Nor did I sow it in the first place. It seeded itself around my plot from my neighbours’ plot. Thank you, Pete and Kate.

And now you can look at my Red Duke of York spuds, their foliage just pushing through the soil. I love the purple flush on the new growth.

And next are my over-wintered field beans (rather like broad beans I am told, but smaller and tastier). This is the first year I have tried them. The metre tall stems are covered in blossom from tip to root, and the scent is glorious. The bees are busy here too.

And last but not least, the strawberries are flowering like crazy…

And the Welsh Onions are bursting into bloom beside the Lemon Balm, although I’m not sure whether I should be stopping them from doing this. On the other hand they will look rather splendid as the flowers open, and of course make lots more seed.

And finally, the brightest face of all at the allotment, other than mine after too much digging. This is yet another lovely plant that grows itself up there with no help from me, and flowers into the winter. Its petals are lovely in salads, and it makes a good herbal tea that is said to improve pretty much any condition. I can believe it. Simply looking at this flower does you good: the orange goes right through your eyes and into your immune system. A big hand then, for the marigold. TARRAAAAH!

Please go to all these places for lots more brilliant stories:

Frizztext’s tagged ‘R’

Ailsa’s Travel Challenge ~ Close-up

DP Weekly Photo Challenge ~ Spring

On watch at Elmenteita–the lake that blows away

The light changes every second across the lake. From dawn till dusk there is always something to watch at Elmenteita in Kenya’s Great Rift. There are over 400 species of birds to spot for one thing – among them the endangered white pelican that breeds there. The main stars, though, are the surely the huge flocks of flamingos, both lesser and greater varieties, that turn swathes of the lake to rose-petal pink. Even a passing glimpse from the nearby Rift highway is enough to catch the breath. A pink lake – how can that be?

We came here often while we lived in Nairobi, staying at Delamere tented camp on the lake shore – a quirky, step-back-in-time establishment within its own nature reserve. The camp, itself was wholly unobtrusive -16 large tents, each sheltered by a thatched canopy and set out beneath fever trees that, here and there, hosted a sturdy canvas hammock.

The tents were functional – two wood-framed beds, simple cupboards, rattan chairs all locally made. They came, too, with a plain little bathroom attached out back – running water, flush loo and shower – all facilities that would still be an unobtain-able luxury to millions of Kenyans. Inevitably, knowing this added to the discomforting ‘them and us’ awareness that accompanied us pretty much everywhere.

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For us wazungu, then, Delamere Camp was an idyllic spot. I once spent a week here by myself while G was at a conference. There were no other guests for most of that time, external and internal tourism having been hit both by El Nino rains that had caused weeks of havoc, and by widely reported bouts of pre-election violence. Manager, Godfrey Mwirigi, treated me as if I were his personal house guest.

I thus spent my days and nights being driven around Soysambu nature reserve in a safari truck with zoologist, Michael Kahiga as my expert guide, or taken on early morning bird walks through the bush, or on late afternoon hikes up through the sage-scented leleshwa brush to Sogonoi cliff-top to watch the sun set over the lake with a glass of wine in my hand. This, the daily late afternoon pilgrimage to the sun-downer cliff, was a pleasing piece of hospitality thought up by Paul Kabochi, the camp’s ethno-botanist. I have written about him in an earlier post, but here he is again on the lake shore at dawn.

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On this solitary sojourn I was sorry to find that he was away setting up another camp. He is a man whose great fund of knowledge is sadly missed, and I would have been glad to have had another chance to speak with him. Instead, I talked to Godfrey about tourism. He kindly ate his meals with me so that I did not have to sit in the dining room alone.

Between times, hot water bottles and extra blankets appeared like magic in my bed, or indeed in the truck for the evening game drives. (Nights in the Rift can feel frosty). And all the time I watched and watched until my brain ached with sensory overload.

The camp overlooked the lake and the remnant volcanic cone that has long been known by the Maasai as the Elngiragata Olmorani, the Sleeping Warrior. During colonial times it acquired a further name – Lord Delamere’s Nose, this apparently in tribute to the impressive dynastic proboscis of the third baron Delamere who, in the early 1900s, and as one of the first pioneer colonists, acquired 19 hectares (46,000 acres) of shore-land around the the east, north and west of the lake.

His brother-in-law, Galbraith Cole, son of the Earl of Enniskillen, farmed the southerly shores at Kekopey. He was a man who was later exiled from British East Africa because he shot dead one of his labourers for stealing a favourite sheep. He later sneaked back to Kekopey disguised as a Somali, and his mother, Countess of Enniskillen successfully pleaded his cause. At the age of 48, and looking out over the lake, he shot himself, unable to bear the constant pain of his rheumatoid arthritis.

The descendants of these early settlers still live and retain most of their lands (including estates at nearby Lake Naivasha). In fact the only way to gain access to Elmenteita is to book into one of the exclusive safari lodges that now stand on the land that belongs to these old colonial families. This sense of British aristocratic exclusivity inevitably strikes a sour note. Doubtless these landowners will say they are custodians and that, without their dutiful care, the place would be wrecked by ramshackle trading operations and squatters, and the wildlife decimated.

Even in my home town in Shropshire we are still ruled by such feudal argument. ‘Keep Out’ signs exclude the people of Much Wenlock from the ancient Priory parkland that is now owned by one family. In Great Britain we take for granted (or are even unaware of) the power of the self-appointed, self-aggrandizing elite who own most of our countries’ lands. I imagine, though, that many people would be surprised to know that super-squiredom is also alive and well in East Africa.

Before the British annexed East Africa in the 1890s, and all the (deemed) unoccupied territory became the property of the British Crown, and the locals obliged to stay forever on the land where the British happened to find them, land usage and territorial ownership was a much more fluid affair. For instance, up in the Rift highlands, and going back hundreds of years, the Kikuyu farmers had negotiated the legal acquisition of new land with the indigenous Okiek hunters, whom the Kikuyu judged to be the land’s original owners. Over the centuries this process of colonisation caused an occupational creep: as land became exhausted or overcrowded, so clan scions left their fathers’ homesteads and sought out fresh territories for their own families to cultivate. It is a similar story over much of the continent as the Bantu agriculturalists sought fresh ground.

As the boundaries of allotted farm and pastureland nudged further into the Rift, so there was competition and conflict with the pastoral Maasai. The herders anyway believed themselves masters of the Rift, shifting up and down it as need for fresh grazing and water dictated. The farming communities with whom they traded and inter-married also at times presented an alluring target. This was inspired by the cattle herders’ belief that Enkai, the creator, had bequeathed all the cattle on earth to the Maasai. For young warriors intent on proving their courage and amassing cattle to augment family honour, armed cattle raids on their farming neighbours were a matter of necessity.

It is interesting, then, that colonial aristocrats such as Delamere, who established large stock ranches in the Rift, were inordinately admiring of the Maasai, seeing them as nature’s aristocrats. It is also tempting to put this down to a congruence of world vision: recognition of a mutual case of droit du seigneur? In fact in those early days, Delamere was the only white man for whom the Maasai would deign to work, although this did not stop them from making off with large numbers of his sheep and cattle.

That the Rift was once Maasai territory is indicated by the many place names – Naivasha, Nakuru included – that are European renderings of Maa originals. Elmenteita derives from ol muteita, meaning “place of dust” and, from time to time, this shallow soda lake does turn to dust. At the best of times it is only around 1 metre deep. It shrinks and expands depending on the rains. But when not blowing away to dust, it extends over some 19-22 square kilometres.

The alkaline waters are rich in the crustacea and larvae that the greater flamingos feed on, and in the blue-green algae that the lesser flamingos syphon up through the top of their bills. The former have white plumage with a pink wash; the latter are more the colour of strawberry ice cream. Both honk, and grunt and mutter in a continuously shifting mass. All night you can hear them as you lie awake in your tent.

A view to dine for: Losogonoi Escarpment and the lake shore

But it is not only the bird life that make this place so special. The traditional ‘big five’ may be lacking in this part of the Rift, but it is still home to Rothschild giraffe, eland, buffalo, zebra, ostrich, impala, gazelle and a host of smaller game – aardvark, zorilla, porcupine, African wildcat. Since our time in Kenya much has changed at Soysambu. In 2007 the private Delamere Estate began operating as a not-for-profit conservation organi-zation called Soysambu Conservancy.

Delamere Camp has long gone. In its place is a new enterprise, the very expensive Serena Elmenteita Luxury Camp, a sort of out-of-Africa manifestation with bells on, the kind of set-up that intrudes a different kind of exclusivity on this piece of Kenya. But then of course there’s always the usual argument: that the provision of luxury on this scale does at least provide many, many jobs for Kenyans. Across the lake, however, something of the original Delamere Camp ethos has been re-created at the Sleeping Warrior Eco Lodge and Tented Camp – all within the Soysambu Conservancy.

In fact things have not been going well with the Delamere family. The sheer mention of the name has been enough to evoke great fury among many Kenyans. In 2005 and again in 2006, Thomas Cholmondeley, sole heir of the 5th Baron and Soysambu’s manager, admitted to shooting dead an African. The first case involved a plain clothes officer working for the Kenya Wildlife Service, apparently on the Soysambu farm to investigate a poaching incident. Cholmondeley says he thought the man was robbing his staff. Action against him was dropped.

In the second case, he caught a group of poachers with a dead impala, and said he was shooting at their dog when he fatally wounded one of the men. Later he claimed it was his friend, Carl Tundo, who had shot the poacher, and that he was covering for him. The whole sorry story was featured in the BBC Storyville film Last White Man Standing. Later the charge of murder was changed to manslaughter, and in any event Cholmondeley spent 3 years in Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, Kenya’s toughest jail. To many, though, it was thought to be far too lenient a sentence. The high profile media coverage also reminded millions of landless Kenyans that certain individuals had in their sole possession unimaginably vast estates. The old skeletons of racism and colonial oppression came rattling out of the cupboard to fuel the general furore, as the poacher’s widow asked for justice.

And so what in the end are we left with – a beautiful place enmeshed in tales of human intrigue, slaughter and misadventure.

I know I was lucky to spend so much time there when I did, and to see it through the eyes of the Kenyan naturalists who were my guides. I hope that many of them still work there – for Serena or Soysambu. They taught me how to watch out in that landscape: to recognize tracks of genet cat and mongoose, to poke through the little piles of dik dik droppings that marked this tiny antelope’s territory, to identify a black-breasted apalis or shy tchagra, to listen for the calls of the red-fronted tinkerbird, to know that an infusion of bark from the muthiga or Kenya Greenheart tree is good for toothache and stomach upsets, and most especially not to fall into aardvark holes as I was walking through the thornscrub.

Finally then, a few glimpses of Soysambu’s beautiful creatures.

Photos from bottom up:

Superb starling comes to breakfast

Waterbuck females

Dik Dik (one of the smallest antelopes, slightly larger than a hare)

Saddlebill stork, impala in the background

Eland (the largest of Africa’s antelope) and ostrich

Burchell’s zebra

Rothschild giraffe

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Much lettered at Much Wenlock’s Poetry Festival

These letters are knitted (I think I was responsible for the red ‘E’) and here they are adorning the cherry tree on the Church Green. This is the Wenlock Poetry Festival’s ‘Poetree’ (artistic licence rendered photo-wise) and, during this now annual April event, everyone may compose, or write verses from their favourite poem on a luggage tag and hang it on the tree for others to read.

This year the tree has joined in the general creativity by bursting into bloom. In previous years it has been quite bare.

The festival embraces the entire town, using venues at Wenlock Pottery, Methodist Church, the George and Dragon Pub, Tea on the Square Cafe, and The Edge Arts Centre. Besides the three-day programme of readings, talks and workshops with top British poets, there are verses to be found all over the place. Nearly all the shop windows host one, and they include works by local amateurs as well as the more famous.

And then there are the ten Dada Poetry Orienteering spinners (including 2 mystery ones) sited about the town. They comprise phrases culled from printed matter – from the Declaration of Human Rights to a tea wrapper. Visit some or all and, with random spins of the pointer, create an on-the-spot composition.

And when inspiration needs a further boost, then there are refreshments on hand, not only at the Poetry Café in the Priory Hall, but at the town’s ancient inns, and traditional tea rooms.

And here we come to the heart of the festival, the town’s famously much loved independent book shop, Wenlock Books. Its owner, Anna Dreda, has been the primary driving force behind the festival, enticing, Carol Ann Duffy, Britain’s Poet Laureate, to be the festival’s founding patron. The festival is now in its fifth year, and involves the efforts of many dedicated volunteers who put in many months of work to ensure its continuing success.

And so for a small town of less than 3,000 people, we are astonishingly well-lettered, and much of this is down to Anna, who throughout the year (and quite apart from the poetry festival) lures young and old into her lovely shop to take part in reading groups, listen to stories being read, or chat with authors. Coffee and biscuits are ever on offer, and sometimes even a Tea and Toast Breakfast. Last year, too, Anna was invited to meet the Queen during a celebration of British contemporary poetry.

Anna Dreda.

Anna Dreda of Wenlock Books

Sadly, you have just missed this year’s festival, but now that you’ve glimpsed a little of what’s on offer in Much Wenlock, check out the festival website below and make a date for next April. But before you leave, a few more views of lettered Wenlock: