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My second evening at the farmhouse in the Kenya highlands was really my first as far as making plans went. True, I had arrived the day before after a four hour drive up from Nairobi but as coincidence would have it, I had arrived just a couple of days after Petra formally took ownership of the house. She had been connected to the house for several years but had been running another, more rustic guesthouse up till then so Sunday we hadn't had much of a chance to talk.

But Monday evening while we sat on her front veranda drinking sundowners and watching the sun sink behind the Aberdares, she outlined an agenda of walking tours, some game drives and then maybe seeing Nyeri with a quick trip to Lake Naivasha. Oh yeah, and the Aberdares Country Club.

When she paused to see what my reaction was, the only thing I could think to say was a mystified, "What's the point?"

I was lucky she had a sense of humor and because she was German. Her sense of humor kicked in and she started laughing while her German directness ensured she wasn't offended. However, she did say, "Well, that's what you talked about in your emails" which indicated it was close run thing.

Which was true. I had said some of those things in the emails because I wasn't really sure how it would come across if I said I was trying to do research for a historical fiction novel. I wasn't really eager to say I was writing a book at all and thought it would come across better to explain this in person. During our email exchange while I was planning the trip, I was mostly interested in making sure Petra could offer a driver and the help I would need.

Also, it didn't help I had no idea what the hell I was doing. And at the moment, all I really knew was that I was a four hour drive out of Nairobi and the Mau Mau rebellion which largely consisted of raids on isolated farmhouses and only occassionaly a set piece battle had taken place in this area.

So, I 'fessed up and waited to see how Petra would react.  She thought about what I had said and then let out a tentative, "I see" but it was clear she took the idea seriously. "Well, let me think about this for a bit. It might take some time to organize."

"To organize" in Kenya is a verb meaning to arrange, acquire, buy or somehow come in possession of any number of things and generally covers most contigencies in life. For instance, if you want to tell someone you will pick them up in a rover but don't want to go into the details of how you will actually get the rover because it might be a long story, then you say, "I'll organize a land rover and pick you up." I think the verb has come into usage because so many arrangements in Kenya tend to be ad hoc and how people get land rovers can involve stories of breath taking complexity. At the same time, Kenyans, or at least the ones I met, are extraordinarily flexible in their outlooks. Throw a problem at them, and they will come up with a resourceful solution, and they take inordinate pride in being able to do so. This definitely comes from living in a developing country where everything is in short supply. Or as Jim remarked at one point, nothing that is a manufactured product is ever thrown out but instead saved on the off chance it can be "organized" into a solution.

But, even so, Petra would need a day or two to work on the problem. In the meantime, I would spend the time on bush walks with Ayub, Petra's resident guide, gathering background information on the land where the British fought the Mau Mau.

The next day, Ayub met me at the farmhouse and we set off. Like most Kenyans, he was dressed totally inappropriately for the bush with faded, stained dress pants from a suit, used soft leather loafers and a dress shirt. But the fact is, Kenyans get their clothing from a massive used clothing bazaar in Nyeri and wind up with things of this nature. But this didn't slow him down when we headed into the bush, what slowed us down was the fact he knew not only the names of every plant we passed but whether or not it had some medicinal use. He could and did recite the scientific names of the plants but also the common names as well as the Kikuyu names.

I had the impression he was a bit on automatic pilot when we first headed out, but when I pulled out a notebook and began scribbling notes on what he said, he took notice. Over the course of two days, he showed me plants that cured high blood pressure, relieved asthma, helped this or that problem with digestion, regulated heart beats, and cured malaria. The latter, a low growing vine that crops up in fields, was so full of natural quinine when I chewed the leaves it seemed like my mouth had gone completely dry with the bitterness. Western pharmaceutical companies have taken notice of this sort of knowledge and several laboratories in Kenya work on trying to isolate the chemicals in the plants to find out what how they work. In the U.S. or Europe, a new blood pressure drug could be worth billions.

After the first hike, Ayub took to testing me about the plants we had already seen. If we came across, say, the Charissa bush, he'd demand to know what it was good for and when it blossomed. I would wrack my memory to tell him it produced berries useful as a jam, had pink flowers that bloomed before the rains, and... and... and... After a bit, he'd fill in the stuff I had forgotten but he seemed satisfied that at least something he was saying was sinking in.     

But the one place where we didn't get far was talking about the Mau Mau. In fact, Ayub was so vague on this subject I wondered if he even knew the history of the Mau Mau, and so I prattled on about times, dates and what not. Ayub was always polite and would nod in agreement but that was it.

On the afternoon of the second day, as we headed down into a steep ravine, Ayub stopped by a pool of water and sat down on a rock. In the rainy season, this ravine would be awash with white water but right now, the seasonal river was just a string of pools bordered with baboon, impala and eland tracks.

"We rest," Ayub said. Like many Kikuyu, he spoke English like a gun firing with emphasis on every word. Partially, this stems from the fact that English is a foreign language and partially from the fact this is the cadence of Kikuyu. I was a bit surprised since we normally didn't stop for rests given we were stopping all the time to examine plants or animal tracks.

"Do you know why I care about the environment?" Ayub asked. I shook my head at first bemused but then as he talked, I took what he said more seriously as he went along. Ayub said he had been working at a company in Nairobi and earning a good salary. The owners of the company encouraged him to invest all his money with them and he'd done so. But then, the company had folded overnight and the owners disappeared with his savings and most of the savings of the other workers involved.

"I went crazy," Ayub said. I could well understand. In the knife blade existence that most Kenyans live, losing two or three years of savings would be a massive blow. Ayub said he went back to the bush and lived there for six, eight weeks using his knowledge of plants and snaring animals to keep alive. But after a while, Ayub said living in the bush let him overcome the disappointment and he started working for a non-governmental organization which is where he met Petra. Now he worked for her.

That evening, I mentioned the story to Petra and she listened intently. 

"But I guess you know all that about Ayub," I added.

"No, he's never told me this," Petra said. "All I knew is that he was working at the NGO."

At some point, while walking, talking about plants, doing quick tests on them, and jotting down notes, I had formed a connection to Ayub.

By the end of the trip, it would turn out that it was Petra and Ayub who had the keys to finding Mau Mau history but at that point, it wasn't so obvious.