A small plaque on it reads ‘He prayeth well, who loveth well both man and bird and beast’. Some days, she’s accompanied by local drummers and enacts the romance by the obelix that was erected by his brother at the grave. Kung’u is a story teller and vividly portrays this epic love story. “They dreamed of being buried here because in those days you could see both Mount Kenya and Kilimanjaro, as well as Karen’s home.” Karen’s home refers to the now famous Karen Blixen Museum in Karen the neighbourhood named after her.

“Both rode out here,” narrates Susan Kung’u whose home Kikwata doubles up as a ground for camping. The woman who buried him was Karen Blixen. On the return journey, minutes after take-off from the airstrip at Voi, his aircraft Gypsy Moth plunged to the ground and burst into flames. Instead Hatton had to hurriedly ask his unwilling cook Hamisi to accompany him. Although Markham accepted, she changed her mind at the last minute. When Hatton took off for Voi to scout for elephants he had invited Markham to fly with him and not Blixen. She grew up on a farm in Njoro with the local Kipsigis kids and developed a love for horses. Markham was a wild child, abandoned by her mother and brought up by her father. In 1936, Markham became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean east to west in a non-stop flight, a flight more difficult than the eastward journey, because the aircraft flies against the prevailing Atlantic winds. It was the famous aviatrix, Beryl Markham. By the end of the 1920s, even she had to admit that she had lost everything. In reality, Blixen was bankrupt because the coffee farm in Karen on the outskirts of Nairobi was never going to be successful because the soil was not right. Lions roared, giraffes browsed on the acacia and the antelopes kept an eye on the lions. The two lovers, Blixen and Finch Hatton would ride to the hills and spend time gazing at the eagles soaring and the plains that stretched forever filled with the animals. His clenched fist forms the knuckles that are the iconic hills. We’re on the east side of the Ngong Hills that Blixen described as ‘immovable dark waves against the sky’ while the Maasai had a legend of a giant who was speared and fell to his death.

The novel Out of Africa was followed decades later by Too Close to the Sun penned by Sara Wheeler, based on Finch Hatton whose claim to fame is having been the famous lover of Karen Blixen and the famous aviatrix Beryl Markham. It’s based on Karen Blixen’s novel Out of Africa which Hollywood turned into a blockbuster in the 1980s and everyone wanted to know who these people were, that is Karen Blixen and Denys Finch Hatton. Published: Saturday magazine, Nation newspaper Above: The obelix on Ngong Hills for Denys Finch Hatton by Kikwata Farm.

Asoue the bad beginning