Wild life

Kenya I am proud of Kenya for taking on Muslim extremists in southern Somalia. Rather wisely, the Kenyan military has so far prevented hacks from reaching the field. But for anybody in the outside world who cares, this is not a new battle. Operations against Somalis of varying types of fanaticism have been mounted since the 1960s. From my travels in the Somali borderlands I know this is some of the most thrilling terrain for a war — or for a safari. Not long ago, I set off for the frontier-coast village of Kiunga to get closer to the fighting.

Aidan Hartley’s Wild Life Israel Jerusalem was once a very sad place for me and I feared returning. I was mad with grief when I was last here in the 1990s. I remember my friend Julian tried to cheer me up by taking me to a gun shop where a South African who had made aliyah gave us M16s and boxes of ammo that we took down to a range to blast away at images of terrorists. It didn’t do any good. I came down with malaria, a parasite hung over from years of reporting African wars. ‘Africa?’ said the Israeli doctor. ‘We’ll run an HIV test. You might have Aids.’ ‘I’ve got malaria.’ He returned an hour later and said, ‘You’ve got malaria.’ In those days I had a girlfriend in Jerusalem.

Aidan Hartley's Wild Life  Nairobi My friend Philip Coulson was shot at midnight while driving home after the theatre in Nairobi recently. He had slowed down to go over some rumble strips when a white car halted in front of him. ‘A man got out and I could see in silhouette that he had a gun,’ Philip tells me. He backed away in reverse but the man walked up and from a few feet away he fired his pistol at Philip’s face. The closed window exploded. Philip felt a tug in his stomach. ‘That was a bit over the top,’ he says. ‘I thought, “I’d better get out of here.”’ He started to go forwards and the man said, ‘Now I’m going to kill you.

Indian Ocean On Hassan’s dhow, shaped like Vasco da Gama’s caravel, I can forget about dry land for a fortnight of holiday. If I could, I’d give it all up and set sail for the outer islands — to Aldabra, to the Chagos, to Socotra. And then I realise I am beached without my old friend Lorenzo Ricciardi. Where on earth are you when I need you, Lorenzo? When I lived in London I was a castaway. Then one day Lorenzo zoomed up in his gunmetal grey Spider with an I ♥ KENYA bumper sticker. He had white hair, wild eyes hidden by aviator goggles, and he wore baggy-armed musketeer shirts. He’d abandon the Spider in the street wherever we stopped and stride away, somehow invisible to traffic wardens.

‘So much sorting to do,’ said my Aunt Beryl. We stood in the middle of her home in Sussex. I hadn’t visited for many years, not since Granny and Grandpa lived here. The memories of those dear people came in such a rush of images I had to sit down. That’s when I noticed the canvas leaning against a wall. The painted side was away from me, so I went over and picked it up. It was a portrait of my mother, Doreen Sanders, as she was in 1945, in Burma. I had never seen this portrait before in my life. ‘Your mother didn’t like it,’ said Aunt Beryl. I wondered, ‘Why ever not?’ The painting is of a beautiful young woman.

Aidan Hartley's Wild life Laikipia I had enjoyed a boozy lunch and afternoon in the Men’s Bar of the Muthaiga. I rarely get time off and I was, like the hue of my adored club’s walls, in the pink — and looking forward to a convivial evening out among fascinating people. The call came in just after sundowners. ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ the voice on the line said, ‘but bandits have stolen all your cattle.’ Still in my city clothes, I raced home through the night, keeping myself awake by loudly blaspheming all the way until I reached the farm two hours before dawn. I cursed my fate. I resolved to give up farming all together. At first light a lion was roaring in the valley and my heart lifted. Our guys had used torches to pick up the tracks.

Democratic Republic of Congo It is impossible to predict how a person will behave in a tight spot. I have been in Congo’s rain forest with my TV producer Ed Braman. He’s a television veteran, a brilliant mind. But he lives in Crouch End and has spent years in offices. I wondered what he’d be like under the African sun. It is hard being with one other person for three weeks incessantly in Congo. It’s hot, you’re tired, dehydrated and the food’s bad. You have to deliver. You must get the pictures. That’s particularly stressful when it’s dangerous — and our story involved making contact with the Mayi Mayi — murderous rebels led by witchdoctors in the jungle. On the road Ed held forth on his passions.

Juba In the run-up to this week’s referendum on Southern Sudan’s future, I flew to Juba with a bottle of Bushmills. The whiskey was for Dan Eiffe. When Sudan’s southern Christian rebels were on the brink of defeat, it was Dan who turned the war around. He has saved countless thousands from hunger. And he has played more of a role than any other Westerner in the creation of Africa’s newest nation, after centuries of bloodshed and slavery. I have encountered odd Western characters in Africa’s wars, such as the Belgian dwarf with a Napoleon complex who in 1994 helped Rwanda’s Hutus kill their taller Tutsi cousins. Dan is an entirely separate kind of oddity. Few of us have faced the dilemmas, or seen the evil, or risked death and damnation the way he has.

Laikipia I have a mob of finished Boran steers ready for the holidays. The butchers are suddenly chasing me and that’s a fine feeling. A year ago, we were in the worst drought for 50 years, with invasions of armed herders and 2,000 cattle. We were left with not a blade of grass. Our cattle were heartbreaking to see. Since then we’ve had rain every month. The animals have grown fat on rippling seas of red oat pasture. Now I must sell up, or I shall be penniless at Christmas. Or the Samburu will go mad with the temptation, rustle them and scoff the lot in the forest. The butchers come knocking. One says that in the name of the Lord he can’t pay a shilling more than one-oh-five per live-weight kilo.

Bangkok ‘Any Thai man who is not married is gay,’ said a Thai woman to me. ‘You could say that about many places,’ I observed. ‘Yes, but 80 per cent of Thai men are also effeminate,’ said a second Thai woman in the room. We were waiting to see a top politician. There were no local men present. I’ve never heard people complain like this about their males, except perhaps in Britain. These were Thais, not British women. I was delighted. I felt a wave of empowerment. I am no Greek god. But nor am I a ladyboy. Out on the streets of Bangkok, though, the pressure is pretty intense. I am glad we clearly stood out as journalists, rather than sex tourists. I mean, Matt the producer held a big camera and I was rigged up with a microphone.

Rift Valley The patriarch Jacob Mukhamia Omanyo, grandfather of my friend Celestina, was born in 1888 in western Kenya. For 119 years he lived a healthy life, falling sick only once in 1964, after a spider bit him. He married five wives, the first in 1924, his last in 1975. At his death of typhoid two years ago he rejoiced in having 21 surviving sons and daughters; 217 grandchildren, 450 great grandchildren and 24 great, great grandchildren. Omanyo fought for the British against von Lettow-Vorbeck in the first world war. But what made him special, back before the Versailles Armistice, was that he attended a Roman Catholic mission school when few others from his tribe believed in such things. Education helped him rise to become a senior chief, a magistrate and a landowner.

Rainy Season on the Cattle Stock Route From the side of the track, a Samburu youth waved me down. I stopped the vehicle. He was gorgeously dressed for market day: all feathers, beads, disks of aluminium, with ochre on his head and bare shoulders. He wore in his beaded belt a stabbing sword in a leather scabbard. In his left hand he carried a herding stick and metal-headed knobkerrie. In his right was a long spear with a teardrop blade at the point, and this he hid in the branches of a wait-a-bit thorn tree for safekeeping until his return. He loped towards me, spat in his palm and shook my hand. He asked for a lift and I told him to get in. I was on a supply run to town. In the back I carried empty butane tanks, crates of empty beer and soda bottles. It had rained overnight.