Meet Mama Achieng

Mama Achieng keeps two calendars. One is on the wall of her house above Nyakach. The other is in her hands, and it is the one she trusts.

Thirty-four seasons on the same three acres, close enough to the lake that the morning arrives as mist rather than light. She plants her maize two weeks apart so that at any point in the season there is a cob at exactly its sweetest.

She will not pick maize the day before it is ready, no matter who is asking. We have learned to plan around her, not the other way around.

Her sons fish at Dunga. Between the field and the water, most of what her family eats has never seen a lorry.