Last February, my mother called me one yellow afternoon. She is retired and lives on our dairy farm in Kaplong, she lives with my father and our little brother, who is now the farm manager.
Oh, they also live with their cows. (Eye roll.) Their beautiful beloved cows that are now doted upon more than us, the biological children. Yes, I am jealous of the love and attention they receive. Yes, I too want to feature on the profile picture of my father’s WhatsApp.
Anyway, my mother called and after the usual niceties, she told me they have run into some wrinkles on the farm and need some urgent unwrinkling.
I chuckled. Not because of the wrinkles but because I had just been paid that day. One of my clients had settled after a really long time. They had settled that morning and here was my mother calling the same afternoon detailing the wrinkle. Money in your pocket does send out its own smoke signal, doesn’t it?
I was still mulling over the wrinkle when she hastily added, ‘But we don’t just want you to send the money, we want you to buy a cow instead.’ I was still processing this when she said, ‘Her name is Valentine, she was born last week, she’s very healthy. Let me send you her photo on WhatsApp.’
A cow?! What would I need a cow for anyway? I live in Nairobi! In an apartment building! Where would I put this beloved cow of mine? Would it ask for its own parking spot, would it get enough sun from our balcony? And who knew my mother could send photos on WhatsApp?
I had wanted to use the money to make a deposit for a piano – my latest hobby – yet here I was using it to buy a cow. I chuckled again. Then I sighed. I didn’t have reason to say no to my mother – and her lovely cow – so I told her I would send the money the next day. The piano could wait.
I went to bed that night feeling the way that people feel when a personal boundary has been crossed. I prayed for patience, asked for abundance then sealed it all with a whisper of gratitude. I looked at Valentine’s photo before sleep took over me – she was beautiful.
The next morning I was the owner of a cow. A calf, really. A cow is not like a Toyota or a shamba, not even a child, there are no papers to show legal ownership, you just know you have a cow.
That all happened in February. It was an open-and-shut affair for me. That April, we were down in Kaplong to spend the Easter weekend on the farm. I was with my siblings and our spouses, and our children.
My little brother took us on a tour of the farm on the final day of the trip. That was the day I appreciated the business dynamics of the farm. My brother crunched the numbers, he told us how much dairy feed each cow takes, milk output and the cost of keeping the cows loved and healthy, schedules for artificial insemination.
It was while he was crunching numbers that the coin dropped: That money I had sent for Valentine back in February was not a cash bailout – it was a cash investment. I had invested in a biological asset!
I asked my father, ‘If Valentine were to be sold right now, how much would she fetch?’ He gave me a figure and I was blown away. Since February, the market value of my cow had gone up by at least 20 per cent. Twenty! I am a personal finance expert and I can tell you that there are few other assets in the market with such an astronomical appreciation rate. At least not the ones in the black market.
I had been an idiot, a fool blinded by the emotions that prompted my mother’s ask. It was also quite laughable and downright amusing that I had not seen the investment potential of our lovely cows on our lovely farm.
My millennial generation is busy putting its money into complex products in the financial markets – crypto-currencies and derivatives and index funds and all that shebang that surrounds trading online on the international markets.
What about the cows here, what about the chickens? Why are we not hyping up tea farming as hard as we are Bitcoin? Is there no appeal in the humility, simplicity and African ancestry of this asset class?
We were driving back from Kaplong to Nairobi when I told one of my sisters about my investment. She whistled like a farmer. ‘Kwani where have you been? I started with one cow in 2016 and she’s been giving birth since, now I have an entire generation of cows.’
