How an east African country became an odd sort of global powerhouse

Red-eyed damsels, pole dancers, two-bit hookers, hot-legs foxy gotcha, woolly buggers, drunk and disorderly, Mrs Simpson and orange boobies are not what you might think. They are just a few of the colourful, dexterously tied flies that fishing folk cast from their rods to lure trout and salmon in the rivers of Scotland, South Carolina, Russia’s Kola peninsula and beyond. What these wacky names have in common is that they are among several thousand fluffy but lethal creations that have made Kenya a global hub of fly-tying.Johnny Onslow, a 67-year-old retired head teacher whose fly-tying firm near the Kenyan town of Rongai is called Gone Fishing, reckons that at least 60% of the world’s supply of artificial flies tied to little fish-hooks is made in Kenya. No one really knows, because there are thousands of freelance tyers who do not register with Kenya’s tax authorities.