The rains are here and mornings dawn cold and grey. At night we are kept awake by the sound of it drumming on our tin roof; everything is damp, mould grows freely in cupboards and on clothes and I sit here typing this wrapped in a big sheepskin coat with, for once, slippers on my feet. Last night the flying ants came, they arrive in ones and twos, attracted by our lights, but then before you know it they have multiplied and the air is thick. They fly in complete panic for many minutes and then fall to the ground, lose their wings, look for a mate and then die. Just like that. In the mornings we sweep up their bodies and gossamer wings and wait for the next time they’ll take flight.

I love this time of year. I love how our forest is so green, I imagine everything growing underfoot and if I sat there long enough I would probably see it grow. I drove down off the farm yesterday, and the stream at the bottom was in full flood. I sat and contemplated it for a while, wondered if my study old station wagon would withstand the force of water, or get swept down on to the rocks instead. But no time for second thoughts, places to go and restless energy at my heels, so we forded the river and roared out the other side.

Most days though I don’t leave the farm preferring to sit perched up here on the foothills, catching only the odd glimpse of our mountain and watching the weather as she moves past.

Beyond this storm-hit windscreen, with me cowering behind it – fair-weather ‘apprentice’ farmer that I am – there are 370 acres of rolling hills, views of both Kilimanjaro and Meru, beautifully aged and remarkable trees and coffee bushes in every direction. And we are now its guardians!

And these are our first “Mbosho Coffee Company” beans, growing happily in the coffee ‘nursery’.

On a hill in the midst is a house, or rather the remains of a house…open to the skies and the elements which of course, because I am a hopeless romantic and practicalities like this don’t concern me, bothers me not one jot! I have already rebuilt it in my mind, even down to the herb garden. I’ll let you know when we move in!!

We were in Mkomazi, a sprawling 3200 sq kilometers of wild open savannah, dusky mountains and glimpses of Tsavo in the far-off distance. It’s not far from us, up here in the north of Tanzania and bordering Kenya. It’s rugged and wild and probably the most beautiful part of Africa that I have ever seen. Not many tourists come here, it’s rather too ‘off the beaten track’ and gets little mention in the guide books; it doesn’t fare so well with its more famous counterparts, the Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater, Tarangire even.
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We needed the break from routine, to escape from our skins even. Life had become stale and our eyes, focused on too many things, had stopped looking up; cast down, watching carefully each step, not taking flight. So we woke at dawn, left behind the cool foothills of Meru, still shrouded in cloud, and raced over the dry dusty flats, past the Monduli Hills, through Maasailand. This side of the mountain falls in its rain shadow, camels and dust devils exist out here, Maasai, but not much else. Neither of us spoke, we didn’t need to make sounds to fill the vast silence, it’s this that makes a companion worth travelling with.

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