Chapter 177: Herding
Having finished their meal, Hohenfis stretched lazily, then began tidying his gear while Maria cleared the dishes.
Hohenfis squatted in front of the bed, tightened the laces of his riding boots, and pulled out a wooden box from beneath the bed. Opening the lid, he found a well-oiled musket inside and checked its condition.
He put on his outer coat, fastened his belt, checked his ammunition, and stuffed it into his pocket. Then he wrapped the musket in cloth, slung it over his back, and took a straw hat down from the wall.
"The water pouch is already filled, and I've put the rations and raincoat in the bag," Maria said, handing him a brown leather pouch.
Hohenfis kissed Maria on the forehead and said, "My dear, I'm heading out."
Leaning against Hohenfis, Maria replied, "I'll have dinner ready. Be careful out there, and don't push your horse too hard."
"I know. I'll be careful," Hohenfis promised.
They walked out of the house together. Hohenfis went to the stable, took the whip hanging on the wooden post, gripped it in his hand, secured the saddle on the horse, placed his foot in the stirrup, and with a swift motion mounted in one smooth leap.
"I'll be back!" Hohenfis called to his wife, then rode off to meet his companions.
Their village didn't have many people, just a dozen or so households, and soon all the villagers gathered.
"Everyone's here," the village head, Karl, confirmed. "Go open the cattle pen and drive them out."
A sizeable pen stood by the village, holding over three hundred head of cattle.
Hohenfis and the others opened the pen, herding the cattle out. A group of about ten drove them toward the grasslands.
"Hyah!"
…
All of East Africa is like a natural grand pastureland. Hohenfis and his companions herded the cattle to a spot with lush grass and began their day's work.
The cattle here in northern Kenya weren't the same as the batch Ernst had originally imported from the Netherlands but rather the local African cattle, mainly used for labor and future meat consumption. Meanwhile, the Dutch dairy cows were carefully managed in coastal areas, since they were more delicate.
These local African cattle originally belonged to the native people, but the East Africa colony had seized them and gathered them on Kenyan grazing lands.
In reality, Africa domesticated few animals, though not none at all. For instance, domestic donkeys supposedly came from two subspecies of African wild ass in eastern Africa, namely the Nubian and Somali wild asses. Even now, wild asses still exist in Somalia and parts of Ethiopia—an ancient Egyptian legacy unrelated to the peoples south of the Sahara.
As for the origin of African cattle, there are various theories. Early archaeological studies posited that African domestic cattle were not originally domesticated locally but rather spread from Asia and Europe via the Nile Valley and the Somali coast. In the late 20th century, some proposed that Africa domesticated its own native wild oxen. Later, a third theory emerged, suggesting the western deserts of Egypt were an independent center of domestication. Ernst himself leans toward a multi-origin hypothesis, since many places in the world have records of domesticated cattle (except the Americas, Australia, Oceania, etc.).
Regardless, the existing domesticated cattle in these East African regions were simply spoils of colonization.
Besides African domestic cattle, the East African colony also had a supply of African zebu, largely introduced to East Africa by medieval Arab and Indian traders from the Indian subcontinent, now found in many parts of East and Central Africa.
At present, the colony is mixing both types of cattle in northern Kenya's grasslands.
All told, northern Kenya registers about 130,000 cattle, while other parts of the colony also raise many cattle, though not on the same scale, mostly used as draft animals.
Hohenfis rode atop his horse, surveying the surroundings. Although the East African colony had repeatedly carried out eradication campaigns against large wild animals in northern Kenya, some inevitably slipped through.
For that reason, Hohenfis and the other herders were always armed. Before the colony, Africa's cattle population was likely even greater, but not many fell into the colony's hands. For example, main livestock owners like the Sultanate of Zanzibar and the Buganda Kingdom lost their herds while fleeing, taking the cattle with them.
The colony's cattle mostly came from the region's nomadic tribes, such as the Maasai, whose property was seized and turned into slaves, or else driven west.
Africa also had large populations of wild African buffalo, which the colony disliked. Early on, settlers used them for food, and once farming solved food shortages, the African buffalo ended up on the same list as lions and hyenas—hunted to near extinction in the colony's zones. They now survive only in places like the Serengeti Plain, the East African Rift, Mount Kilimanjaro, or other remote forests.
Now it was late in the rainy season, and a light drizzle began. Hohenfis and the others donned raincoats. This slight drizzle still meant lush grasses for grazing, so carrying a raincoat was standard.
Herding life was mostly dull but also relatively leisurely. Especially in East Africa's fixed-range grazing, the herders didn't need to roam like American cowboys, since there wasn't a huge consumer market as in the American West.
And the colony's herds weren't large enough to warrant major exports yet, so they mostly focused on breeding their stock.
After a while, the rain stopped, and around midday the village head Karl called everyone over for lunch.
"Ah, I wish time would go faster—I miss home the most when I'm chewing these flatbreads every day. Chief, you're from the Far East, right? Tell us about your homeland!" said Schubert, a Bavarian lad.
Indeed, Karl was Chinese, though his name sounded entirely European. He'd adopted it in Europe and was once an early student at the Hechingen Military Academy. Later, due to poor language skills, he had been sent to Berlin to intern at one of the companies, gradually picking up a very pure Berlin accent.
Karl thought back to his Far Eastern days, then began, "If you're asking about my homeland...the climate there is quite like East Africa, but living conditions are more like Europe. It's an endless sea of wheat fields, and every village has so many people.
But our village houses were different from Europe's, and the roads were about the same as here in East Africa. Before going to Europe, I'd hardly ever seen a city. I grew up in that village, then someone took me to Europe, and I only saw a real city once. The day we left by ship, the team leader told us that the port city was called Jiaozhou, a big metropolis in the Far East. That's where I sailed out, heading to Europe..."
"Chief, don't talk about Europe. We're more curious about the Far East. I heard that's where my wife comes from, so tell us more about it," Schubert said.
"The Far East is huge. I don't know if your wife is from the same place. Later, at Hechingen, I saw a world map showing my homeland. It's almost as large as all of Europe, and many places speak different dialects. In school, some classmates were from my area, but many of them had dialects I couldn't understand—almost like the difference between German and French. How would I know which province your wife came from? And I never got a proper education there. I only remember the name of my village and that coastal place called Jiaozhou. I'm not familiar with much of the Far East beyond that. I heard a few placenames when our village hosted an opera, but I never really knew where they were."
Perhaps for the rest of their lives, these villagers wouldn't know that their wives and Karl weren't even from the same country. They only knew their wives were from the East, but exactly where? In this closed age, without any schooling, they'd never figure it out.
Karl himself only came to know what his homeland looked like through the Hechingen school's world map. Many peasant families never ventured beyond their own county town, spending their entire lives confined to their villages.
Likewise, these men's wives, coming from different parts of Southeast Asia, were just as lacking in knowledge. They may not even know which country they came from.
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