My first memory of a horse is in Langata. I was four years old. Angry after being told off by my mother, I ran off into the small forest at the back of our house, full of blue gums, crunching leaves and twigs under my sandals as I ran.
After a few minutes, I was lost and so anger turned to anxiety. I decided to make for home, a wooden house on stilts. I thought I could see it, visible between tree trunks in the distance.
It wasn't our house. It was a neighbour's. At the back he had a horse. He gave me a sugar lump. I held my hand, but as the horse's lips puckered my hand curled away and the horse inadvertently gave my finger a bite with its flat teeth. It drew blood and crushed the top of a finger.
When I was seven or eight I started horse-riding lessons in a paddock. "You have a very good seat." said the teacher. I liked the riding helmet. It was hard to find one that fit. Hard, black, covered in velvet - folded bright red silk inside. I liked the warmth of the horse. The tightness of it's belly, the soft convexity of its flanks. Nothing is more delicate than the feel of a horse's lips on the palm.
After a while, I was leading the other children around the enclosure. I held tight to the the sides of the horse with my thighs, that after a few months strengthened until I had a firm grip. At the same time, I relaxed balancing my trunk, adjusting and flowing to every movement. The teacher shouted her commands.
Dad told us a story about riding a difficult horse:
When he was a boy he was sitting on a horse which shrugged him off its back. It leaned forwards and shook, so that Dad slid down over the its neck to the ground.
"I got on the horse again and a friend came up alongside on another horse. I started to explain what had happened. I was explaining, and had just reached the moment in my explanation where I described how the horse slipped me off its back, when the horse decided to do it again. I realised what the horse was doing. So, continuing with my story I looked at my friend and said: "...and then I fell off...... just like this..." and so I fell off. I was, on the ground again.
I wasn't horse mad, but there were a lot of horse mad little girls in Nairobi. They went to the Gymkhana club and entered show-jumping competitions with their ponies.
My daughter told me about a pony obsessed friend of hers a few years ago. Her biology project was about her pony, her literature essay was about her pony, her art project was about her pony, her mathematical calculations included ponies. She had pictures of her pony on her books, pencil cases, bags and accouterments. Almost every sentence she said began with:
"Well, my pony..."
I fantasised I could master horses: that they would respond to me because they could feel my love. But these were slave horses, the poor things. There was no romance. Pony trekking in Wales for a month when I was nine taught me this. I got on a horse that swung its head round to bite. It didn't feel love, it was resentful. It bit the rump of the horse in front once and we both bolted forwards and raced until the horses tired leaving everyone else behind.
I've been on horses that have tried to scrape me off against stone walls, horses that leap up, bucking. Do horses really like to be ridden? The truth is I never really got to know any horse very well.
But I think I gave up on trying to get on with horses on the occasion when we went to lake Naivasha. My parents hired a horse for me to ride at the lake. Everyone else decided just to have a picnic. It was lunchtime. It was lunchtime for the horse too and I was interrupting lunch. It looked strong and shook its neck from side to side as it was taken out. I should have understood. I approached.
I mounted smoothly. But it turned back to the stables trying to go inside. The top half of the stable door was closed and so had it entered I would have been scraped off the saddle. I understood I was in trouble then. I reigned it away and so the horse decided to bolt forwards. I tried to bring it to a halt, but instead it started to gallop forwards. After a fact it was galloping towards the picnic spot.
I decided not to shout for help. I pretended I was in control, and as I passed my family, entering the field they were picnicking in, I stood up in the stirrups and waved airily at them smiling, and the horse crossed the field in a few seconds.
We soon ran out of open ground. I turned the horse round again, but it refused to stop. Now, because the horse was heading home, it let rip. And if we were galloping fast on the way out, then we were racing back faster on the way home. This time, I had to hold on harder. Still, I managed another gallant wave.
Finally, reaching the stables, the horse slowed to a trot. It had judged me well. It wanted to frighten me off and to get back to eating and resting. It succeeded. My knees tremble as I dismount. At that moment I understand. I understand that when I ride I am only in control when the horse allows me to be.
My great grandfather, Conrad Gobel was a mounted military policeman in Schlitz. I only have one picture of him. It was the picture his daughter, my grandmother, kept of her father. He is sitting up proudly - straight, on a large dappled animal with a white mane. Conrad has an admirable bearing. He looks smart with his spiked helmet on his head.
They must have made a very handsome pair, that horse and my great grandfather until, not long after the photograph was taken, the dappled horse kicked Conrad to death leaving great grandmother Carolin husbandless but with quite a generous pension.
The last time I rode for any time on a horse was on a trip to a town, San Juan, which had been covered by lava from a volcano, Paricutin, born out of a field in 1944. I felt sorry for the horse. It was thin and brown. I was then a large man in my late thirties. I spent most of the ride trying to imagine myself lighter as the horse negotiated the vegetation and climbed sharp ripples of lava . No illusions any more of any bond between me and poor slave horses persist.
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