My farm manager is Kato, a small bundle of immense energy without whom I could achieve nothing and who constantly raises my morale and lightens my mood with funny stories. Kato taught me that getting Ndali “right” was a question of good people management and experiment.
We tried, among others, rice, soya, maize, chillies, onions, coffee and bananas. Then I hit upon vanilla. It became my eating, walking, sleeping, talking, love-affair nightmare.
Looking back, it was two violent incidents that brought me to where I am today. The first was the unexpected death of my uncle, the day after I arrived in Uganda to see him; the second, the attempted murder of my Ugandan farm manager, three years later. The first I came to see as serendipity, the second as rocket fuel. Read full article here.