Thomas, a son of a nomad had always been a nomad himself. His wife Sarah had joined him in his nomadic life. The twosome were birds of the same feathers. But his two sons, Peter and Philip, after their education had not wanted anything to do with nomadic life. They both were urban dwellers, working in government offices.
Every entreaty to Thomas to make him abandon his life in the bush had fallen on deaf ears. He insisted that rearing animals freely was an inheritance from his great grandfathers, and so, was not willing to drop it. He claimed the joy he derived from moving around with cows in the bush was unquantifiable.
A number of times, he had had confrontations with farmers whose farm his cattle had strayed into, and damaged their crops. In many cases, he had paid compensations to those farmers. In spite of these challenges, he had totally refused to embrace ranching which is a modern way of animal husbandry.
In many cases when government had rolled out a revolving loan programmes which many cattle rearers like him had taken advantage of to establish their ranch businesses, Thomas had not cared. The issue is that his obsession with nomadic life style had taken a better part of him such that he believed there was no life without roaming about with his cows.
A time came when the location he reared his cattle was taken over by the government for the establishment of an airport and a university. It was such a large expanse of land that that left little or nothing for him to settle in with his cows.
Everyone had thought that would be the last straw that broke the camel's back to force him change his way of life and go for ranching. But the stubborn Thomas remained adamant, and instead decided to go in search of another region to move into.
On the way, before he could get to the area of his fancy, a torrential rain beat him and Sarah mercilessly. All their belongings, including clothing were drenched with water.
Having reached the area, a hilly grassland, they unpacked, and spread out their clothing and other items in the sunny weather that came up.
The second assignment he attended to was the building of a tent where they will lay their heads in the night. Thereafter he started thinking of how to lead his cows out for pasture.
So, Thomas the nomad remained a nomad without any plan to change.