It is often said that insanity is doing one thing several times and expecting different results.
Well, here it is not about one's state of mind but it is about doing things a bit differently to achieve the desired results. And this seems to have been perfected by one Maasai harder in Munyu, Thika East who has decided to rear his cattle differently from other herders in the area to give him maximum benefits.
His name is Boniface Ntaiya from Narok County but was born in Munyu 30 years ago where his late father had bought a 12-acre piece of land in the 1970s. Ntaiya says that he resorted to paddocking, a type of farming where animals graze in a controlled manner through rotation and thus being able to conserve pastures, after he realised that traditional grazing would do him no good.
He is now a major supplier of beef in Thika and beyond.
"I always say that if you go to the market and find that majority of the people are selling vegetables, sell grains. Take the risk and do that which is not common," Ntaiya said on Friday at his farm.
He adds: "I watched my late father when growing up doing the same thing that other herders were doing both here and in Narok. Today, there isn't much left of what he was doing then and that is why I vowed that I will not continue with the same thing."
Many herders in Thika including local ones still move their cattle from one area to the other looking for pastures which the animals exhaust fast immediately the rain stops.
"Here we have local herders with even big lands than mine but they still do traditional herding. I would advise them to move from that kind of farming because like now during this dry January they are almost running out of pastures," he said.
He has also advised the area youths to seek to do things differently and they will stand out in the long or the short run.