Confessions of the daughter of the one million hectare landowner - The Way of the Farmer

“I am not just a stupid richman’s daughter. I know why the farmer who lives on the hill has suddenly taken an amorous interest in me. I am after all the daughter of the one million hectare landowner. I even know that he may well have a diabolical hidden agenda. But how can I possibly turn such a man away just because of this?

Life is after all not black and white, cut and dried or even guilty or innocent like how its so often depicted in books and the movies – a man is never so evil that his heart has no place for even goodness to take root. I am not making excuses for this man who has suddenly and unexpectedly walked into my life. I simply want to understand him for who he really is before I make a decision…..to continue….or to walk away from it all….

I know what I am about to say may surprise most of you - but I don’t really care what his intentions really are. I don’t even care if they happen to be honorable or even purely self serving. I know this all sounds like something that would come from an infatuated 41 year old woman who has missed the boat – but it isn’t really that straightforward. You see, I don’t believe things are ever set in stone – they can change; the seasons change, so can a man….values can shift ever so slightly, they are malleable….as for his heart that too can migrate and change as well…besides all this talk about good people is overrated…….we don’t nearly live in a static world that is set in stone as it’s fluid and yet to take shape all the time – like jelly, there is always enough tremor to make it wobble just a bit. That is really how I see this man and his less than honourable intentions.

You see I believe this man has just been terribly unlucky in life – things have never ever come easy for him. He’s always had to struggle tooth and nail – say what you like of him, that he’s cunning like a fox, devious as the devil and even as scheming as Shylock. But one thing that you cannot take from him ever is that he is a self made man. No one ever gave him any hand out’s and even if they did, it’s unlikely that he would accept – he would probably just take it and call it his own. My Daddy has told me about such men before….I see it in his eyes….

I know he is wealthy in his own right – my point is things never ever came easy for him. Not even for once. I am a woman. I can tell when a man has had a hard life. He is not like those pencil pushers or rich kids that I go out with who don’t know the value of money – they can’t even do one tenth of the things this man has done – they daren’t. They probably shit in their pants. But the farmer who lives on the hill has. He is fearless. And surely that has to count for something. As the last thing I need now is somehow who just loves me like a puppy – for godsake I am 41! And to be really honest at 41. Love isn’t such a big deal - I need a man who can take care of me. To protect me. Someone who can sit me down and tell me that the world is not a simple as what it’s so often represented to be. Someone who can peer into darkened interiors and seek out plans within plans….I need someone who I can respect and teach me how to be hard and ruthless like him. I’ve seen how he intimidates those oil barons – how they shiver before like scared rabbits before a cobra….this is something that only a woman at age 41 can appreciate – had he choosen a girl, none of this would mean anything at all. But destiny has brought him to me….only I can see this man’s worth.

Only he can do all this. As the farmer who lives on the hill has always had to pay a terribly heavy price to fulfill his dreams. I suspect given what he has gone through in Africa – at times the price he has had to pay may have even taken a slice of goodness out of him without even him realizing it. Wonder no more why he’s the way, he is. He can only see the world now in terms of what must be subdued and conquered and overwhelmed. He sees the world as a battlefied full of manuevers and intrigues. I understand that this idea may seem strange and even alien to me as I have never had to ever worry about money or for that matter even “turn the wheel of life,” as he so often uses the phrase in places the threatens to leach away part of my humanity.But the farmer who lives on the hill has. He is someone a woman can respect. Love can come latter.

I may not know exactly what the gentlemen planter who lives on the hill once went through in Africa, South America and God knows where else to have accumulated so much wealth to have allowed him to buy up so much land to plant row after row of palms – but this I do know. There is enough of the past even in the present to haunt the man – I see it everywhere – in that silly new house he is building – that ridicolous man child’s fortress in the jungle. Does he really expect a woman to stay there?????????? I went to his room and asked him, why were there two holes above the window.

The gentlemen farmer did not answer me at once – he seemed to have been drawn back into the well of the distant past and then it came, “they are for my fine feathered friends to rest, hunt and fatten themselves before they make the great journey back to Africa….” Hello, “fine feathered friends????????” If I didn’t know better….he’s probably a crackpot….who regularly claims to be able to talk to birds and trees…..Yes, I am not kidding you…..this man actually believes that birds and trees can talk to him! My point is here and there and perhaps elsewhere there are remnants of his past that I can even touch and see for myself – but what else is there that I cannot see, sense or even discern? Perhaps there is a whole continent of thoughts and emotions running underneath him like one of those underground streams – black and clear waters running deep and ever so silently, yet so powerful that it overwhelms - and that is really why unless I see all these other things – how is it possible for me to just turn him away? Does that even make sense? That I should turn away a man just because he is out to seduce me for all the wrong reasons that he may very well be completely confused about? No! Only a young petulant girl would do that….and she probably wouldn’t know what she’s throwing away either….

Like I said, when I look at this man’s life – he has always had to look over his shoulder and fight. It is not his fault that he is diabolically scheming and crafty to the extent of coming across as an opportunist – he isn’t an opportunist like the others! I’ve seen those sort before. He’s just terribly unlucky…and its hardly his fault…if anything it’s people like Daddy who bring out the worse in him…I’ve seen how he looks at Daddy…no I shan’t go there….not yet….as that darkside of him scares me slightly. Like that day when I caught him by surprise digging the hole and when he looked up suddenly at me…..I could see it all in his eyes…I know what he wanted to do….only I know.

All he really wants to do is to be left alone and plant row after row of palms – and this is where I come in – though I know only too well that he doesn’t love me and what he has really only shared with me for the briefest moments is nothing other than a perfect immitation of love – that is really what the cruel and malevolent world has shaped him to be – deep down, he is a good and decent man and all I have to do is to show him that he doesn’t need to look over his shoulders all the time; he doesn’t have to sleep with a gun underneath his pillow; he doesn’t even need to scheme to get what he wants – all this man needs is to be loved. All he really needs right now is a plantation madam to share his ridicolously huge house in the middle of jungle. All he really needs now is love and to be part of that love. And this I can do.

Yes mythical lover he may well be – hunter of the hearts – now it seems, I too have to transform myself into the mythical lover as well – to turn the tables around even so that the hunter is now the hunted.

Deep inside this is a good and decent man. I must believe this. I must use the power of love to turn him around. I must. I will not fail….I cannot fail…I must succeed….the hunter will be hunted.”