This past weekend, a long-time dream finally took place -and you know how those are always worth waiting for! Thanks to the Aussie saddle that Paige had brought out for us, my father was finally able to join me for a ride in the bush!!

My father with his parents and sister in Australia (1971)

He used to ride as a teenager in Australia and loved it. At the age of eighteen, he moved back to Norway, which is not known for its horseback riding culture. Soon, he had married my mom. The two of them founded Eden and moved their family to the least developed country in the entire world. The coming twenty years were spent building a project from scratch that would one day enable the poorest of the poor to lead a sustainable life, but no one knew then how long it would take for the vision of Eden to come alive. Working around the clock, there was never any time to go horseback riding. My mother didn’t have the health to ride, and doing things apart never scored high on my parents’ list of favourite pastimes, compared to the things they could do together!

Tack was another issue. I needed a saddle that was sturdy enough to carry my father’s frame, and the Australian saddle (that just arrived) was it! Sahara was the obvious mount, as she is our biggest barb (she grew 7 cm in height in our care, even though we bought her at the age of three!) and the two of them connected instantly.

Being a dominant mare, Sahara has always had certain “issues” of wanting to keep track of the other horses in the flock, but this was the first time I saw her completely relaxed and just concentrated on further instructions. My father did not care for a crop  and has not taken a riding lesson in his entire life, but leadership comes naturally to him and so does horsemanship. Even after a gap of 38 years!

We rode out to the Kanya village and enjoyed the beautiful scenery, passing a nomad family that had set up camp in the fields.

From Kanya, we power-walked to Kasheni, and from there turned to head home. By then, Sahara was starting to get that worried look which she gets when she is afraid that she will not be allowed to stretch her legs and go for the horizon-

But who can resist a forwardly cantor when offered one?

Not me, and not my father - even though he had not sat in a saddle for nearly four decades!

Soon enough, Sahara was speeding away with all her power, eager to show my father her talents!

This was not a slow cantor, for trust me, I was having trouble shooting steady pictures on my own flying mount!

By the time we reached the end of the bush, the horses felt as if they had just warmed up and let us know on clear terms that they would have been willing to go on for much longer.

Although we took it fairly easy, it was an amazing ride. I cannot even describe how much it meant to me to be flying across that plain with my father. It was such an enjoyable shared moment! We did have a minor setback with the saddle rocking in full speed (the tree is too wide for our slender horses) and I will have to work on a solution until our 2nd generation of barb horses (who are growing like weeds and will most certainly reach their full potential) are old enough to be ridden, but over all, it was a grand experience with eager horses, eager humans, a quality moment and a gorgeous bush!

Sahara’s only complaint was that we didn’t go further and faster, but I say that was not a bad comeback after a 38 year long saddle absence!