My attempt at farming flops terribly

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BY BENSON RIUNGU

Everyone knows that when Kenyans retire they go to the village to farm as they await the call to join their ancestors upstairs.

That is why we strain brain and sinew to save for that piece of earth, even if it is a rocky patch, where we will spend our dotage and eventually be buried. I can proudly say that I have such a patch in Igoji, on the eastern slopes of Mt Kenya. However, I would be lying if I credited its existence to either my brains or my sinews.

Pursuit

Since I finally accepted the inevitable and bid goodbye to a journalism; a career that over the years has afforded me joy and sorrow in equal measure, I have been critically been surveying my corner of God’s earth. And making great plans to become perhaps the only Kenyan journalist who succeeded in farming.

These are, however, often tempered by memories of previous monumental failures. I first caught the bug 20 years ago when a demon, aided by about half a crate of the amber stuff from Ruaraka, one evening whispered in my ear that there were more worthwhile pursuits in life than writing and editing newspaper stories.

My ego had suffered a walloping a day before, from two men in serious suits and ties who had introduced themselves to me as being engaged in import and export and asked what I did. A journalist, I said.

One of them patiently explained that they meant what I did for a living, that is something serious. I could see skepticism written on their faces when I countered, lamely, that journalism was also a serious occupation. When they challenged me to explain what it entailed, I, however, balked and fled, pleading an urgent appointment.

I could hardly explain that as an editor, my job largely involved polishing ‘copy’ from reporters who did not seem to know  that a sentence begins with a capital letter and ends with a full point. In between, I had to make earth-shaking decisions on whether to punctuate with a hyphen, a semi-colon or full colon.

Nation building

The more I thought about it, the harder I found it to justify even to myself what I did as a serious contribution to nation building. Instead, I thought how proud it would make me to be able to point to a group of people and say, “I keep them fed”. At some point I thought it would be almost preferable to be a matatu tout. Then I might say that I was contributing to the country’s economy by moving people from place to place.

Mine was, therefore, a receptive ear when a drinking buddy said there was a lot of money to be made in tomato farming. The easiest way to part ways with poverty, he said, was to grow tomatoes in Meru and transport them to Nairobi to feed the city’s hungry hordes.

This is the sort of discussion that gets drunks all fired up in bars, and there was no shortage of highly intelligent suggestions on how someone could become a millionaire from just a couple of acres. There was even an example or two of brave men who had bought a fleet of matatus in this manner.

When another wag came up with the wonders that irrigation could do to tomato farming, I had found not just the way to become a serious member of society but a millionaire to boot. I soon learnt that all it took was a water tank to store water for irrigation.

According to our informant, a water tank has incredible functions. Not only does it store water, but when liquid is damned it produces energy that is sufficient to drive sprinklers even when the water pipes are facing uphill.

Mortar

Mark you, the wag added, a water tank does not need to elevated; underground tanks work just as well. Nobody told me that water tanks are specially built using not only mortar but also waterproof cement besides being girded with lintel bars and wire mesh.

The mason I contracted to build one did not know these things either, the result being that once the tank was ready and filled with water, it promptly burst open. People in my village still refer to the resulting debris as ‘Riungu’s folly’.

The rest of the tomato experiment ended equally tragically, and I was soon back in the streets looking for an editing job.

They say there is no fool like an old fool, and there are times these days when I wake up from a nightmare where I make an even greater ass of myself.