African Entrepreneurship Record

Chapter 186: Chapter 175 Grazing

After eating, Hornfeis stretched lazily, then began to tidy up the equipment, while Maria cleaned up the dishes.

Hornfeis squatted in front of the bed, tied the laces of his riding boots, and pulled out a wooden box from under the bed, opened the lid, and inside was a well-maintained musket, which he checked for its condition.

He put on his coat, tightened his belt, checked the amount of ammunition, and put it in his pocket.

Then he wrapped the gun in a cloth strap, slung it on his back, walked to the wall, and took the straw hat from the wall.

”The water pouch is filled, I’ve also packed the dry food and the raincoat in the bag,” Maria handed over a brown leather bag.

Hornfeis kissed Maria on the forehead and said, ”My dear, I’m heading out.”

Maria snuggled in Hornfeis’s arms and said, ”I’ll have dinner ready, be careful out there, don’t rush while riding.”

”Got it, I’ll be careful,” Hornfeis promised.

The two walked out of the house together, Hornfeis went to the stable, took the whip from the wooden stake, held it in his hand, fixed the saddle, and mounted the horse in one swift movement.

”Wait for my return!” Hornfeis said to his wife, then rode off to meet with his colleagues.

In the village where Hornfeis lived, there were not many people, just a dozen or so families, and soon all the villagers gathered.

The village chief Karl counted the people, confirmed they were all present, and said, ”Drive the cattle out of the pen.”

The cattle pen was built next to the village, quite large, with more than 300 head of cattle.

Hornfeis and his colleagues opened the pen and drove the herd out, a dozen people herding the cattle towards the pasture.

”Giddy up.”

...

East Africa is a natural great pasture, Hornfeis and his group herded the cattle to a lush place, then began grazing.

The cattle in northern Kenya were not the batch Ernst had originally imported from the Netherlands, but indigenous African cattle, mainly used for labor and later consumption, while the Dutch dairy cattle were kept in the Marine District, as they were more delicate and needed to be cared for carefully.

These indigenous East African cattle were naturally taken from the hands of the locals, then gathered by the East African colony to be raised on pastures here in Kenya.

There are few domesticated animals in Africa, but they aren’t without precedent. It is said that the domestic donkey, for example, is a hybrid of two African wild donkey subspecies, the Nubian donkey and the Somali donkey. Today, these wild donkeys still exist in the Somali and Ethiopian regions, of course, this is the work of ancient Egypt and has little to do with the sub-Saharan natives.

The origin of African cattle, however, is somewhat controversial. There are three theories: early archaeological research believed that African domestic cattle were introduced from Asia and Europe through the Nile River and East African regions (Somali Peninsula).

In the late twentieth century, the field of archaeology began suggesting that African domestic cattle were domesticated from native African wild cattle.

Later, there was a third theory that proposed the western desert region of Egypt as a place of origin for cattle domestication. Ernst, however, leans toward the theory of multiple origins, as there are records of cattle domestication in many parts of the world (excluding the Americas, Australia, and Oceania).

Regardless, the existing domestic cattle in these East African regions are now spoils of the East African colonization.

Besides African cattle, the East African colony also had a batch of African zebu cattle, primarily introduced to the region by Arab and Indian merchants from the Indian subcontinent in the Middle Ages, and they are distributed in various parts of East and Central Africa.

Currently, East Africa is herding both types together in the grasslands of northern Kenya.

The entire northern Kenya, under the East African colony, now has about 130,000 head of cattle registered, and other areas of the East African colony also raise many cattle, but on a smaller scale than northern Kenya, and mainly used for labor.

Hornfeis rode on horseback, observing the surroundings, although the East African colony had conducted numerous extermination drives on large wild animals in northern Kenya, there were inevitably some that slipped through the net.

Thus Hornfeis and other cattle herders were armed while grazing, to deal with emergencies.

Before the development of the East African colony, the number of cattle in East Africa was much more than today, but those taken by East Africa were not many, for example, major herders like Zanzibar Sultanate and the Buganda Kingdom were only driven away by East Africa, taking most of their cattle as they fled since cattle were important assets.

These domestic cattle in the East African colony primarily came from the pastoral tribes of the East African savannah, such as the Maasai tribe and other nomadic peoples. After seizing their assets, some were turned into laborers by East Africa, while others were driven westward.

Besides domestic cattle, East Africa had a lot of wild African buffalo, but the wild buffalo were not favored by East Africa. Early on, they were used as food by East African immigrants, and after the development of agriculture to solve the food problem of immigrants, the African wild buffalo ended up like lions, hyenas, and other wild beasts, mostly shot in the developed regions of East Africa, now only active in the Serengeti Plains, East African Rift, Mount Kilimanjaro, or other remote mountain forests.

The rain season was coming to an end, and a light rain began to fall, Hornfeis and the others donned their raincoats. This light rainy season was perfect for grazing because of the lush grass, so raincoats were essential equipment.

The grazing life is generally quite monotonous, but also rather leisurely, especially in fixed areas of East Africa where cowboys don’t have to roam like those in the American West, as East Africa doesn’t have a vast consumer market like the United States.

Also, the current cattle population in East Africa is not large, and there is little effect from exports. In recent years, the main focus has been on breeding the cattle population.

Before long, the rain stopped, and it was about noon. Karl called everyone together to sit and have lunch.

”Sigh, I really wish time would pass quickly. Every day when I’m gnawing on these flatbreads, I miss home the most. Chief, aren’t you from the Far East? Tell us about your hometown!” said a young man named Schubert from Bavaria.

Indeed, the village chief Karl is Chinese. Although his name sounds entirely European, it was actually given in Europe. He was an early student of the Heixinggen Military Academy. Later, due to his poor speaking skills, he was sent to intern at a Berlin company, where he gradually learned to speak with a pure Berlin accent.

Karl seemed to reminisce about his Far Eastern days, starting to speak: ”To talk about my hometown, the climate is very similar to East Africa, but the way of life is quite like Europe, with endless wheat fields and many people in every village.

However, in our villages, the houses are very different from European ones, the roads are quite like those in East Africa. Before coming to Europe, I had hardly seen cities, growing up in the village, only seeing a city once before I was taken to Europe. On the day of my first sea voyage, the leader told us the port city was called Jiaozhou, a big city in the Far East, and I sailed from there to Europe...”

”Chief, don’t talk about Europe! We’re mainly interested in the Far East; my wife is said to be from there, so I’d like to hear more about it,” Schubert said.

”The Far East is vast; I don’t know if your wife is from the same place. Later, when I saw a world map at Heixinggen, our area was almost as large as Europe, with many different languages. Even back then, many of my classmates and I came from the same place, but I couldn’t understand many of their dialects, which is probably like the difference between German and French. How would I know which province your wife is from, and I never went to school in the Far East, only remembering the name of my village and the place where I sailed out, Jiaozhou. There were many parts of the Far East I didn’t know, only hearing of a few place names from village operas, but I had no idea where they were,” Karl said.

Probably in their lifetimes, these villagers would never understand that their wives and Karl were not from the same country, only knowing their wives came from the East; but where precisely? In this isolated era, lacking knowledge and culture, they might never figure it out in a lifetime.

Even Karl himself only figured out what his country looked like through the world map at Heixinggen. Many rural people might never visit a county town in their lifetime, remaining confined to the countryside.

As for the villagers’ wives, who came from various parts of Southeast Asia, they were as inexperienced as Karl was before school, possibly not even knowing where their own countries were located.