The English school was in full flow and Dad did the accounts. I used to help with these but spent most of my time at Mulu. Mum and Dad used to go out to Mulu at weekends, so sometimes I would go out with them if I had been in AA that week. Leaving for Mulu was quite a saga on a Friday afternoon, with “ we’ll pick it up on the way” being the most commonly used sentence. I think we still had the old Ford we had travelled up from Kenya in but we also had a green Chevrolet in which we could pack stuff in. I tried to stay at Mulu as much as I could and had a room in the main house. But there were always visitors and I would have to give up my room so I decided to use the annexe (which we used as a school room in later years) as my own pad. Two things I remember about that was the night a dog got its head stuck in a paraffin tin which had been converted into a pail we could carry water in, and it went tearing round the place bashing the tin to try and get it off and making the most ghastly noise (added to by the zabanya shouting at it) and the same night getting struck by lightning. There was a tremendous storm going on and a bolt of lightning hit something and I felt a tingling of electricity all over my body ( I had a metal bedstead). I remember wondering what would happen when I got out of bed. Would the lightning earth itself through me and I would just be a cinder? Luckily after all the excitement of the night, I overslept and leapt out of bed in a hurry and forgot to worry about the possibility of being a cinder. I would ride round the farm every day, visiting the strawberry gardens, the ploughing and anything else going on and pretending I knew lots about it all. Dad was mad on new ideas one of which was growing flax, retting it and I suppose using the fibres for sacking or cloth. So we made a retting pool, soaked the flax when cut, in it. It was a
complete failure. I think my favourite urging on remark was “come on, come on” and I have a vivid memory of hearing staff mimicking me when they thought I could not hear them.
I was very involved in the strawberry and plum harvests trying to sell everything and organising a sale system in AA. I really enjoyed myself. I used to go down the valley once a week to look at things there. Struggling up the mountain side without collapsing from the strain was made worse as Adera, the head person down there seem to just stroll along with me panting and puffing behind him. I sometimes spent the night down there, when coffee planting time was happening and I spent the night on my own in the Kusai house. The staff asked if I was not afraid to do so.” O no” I replied but actually I used to listen out anxiously for the cough of leopards and was quite nervous. We had beehives down there and I am terrified of bees but Zolde, the old retainer, used to insist that I went round all the hives, looking in to see how the combs were developing.