Nairobi, Feb. 8 -- Nobody forgets their first time. The first time they flew. Their first salary. Jackson Kiplagat, the CEO of World Wide Fund for Nature(WWF) Kenya, remembers the first time he left his village.

"In a lorry hired by the school," he says.

He was heading to Nakuru for the Agricultural Society of Kenya show because, even then, farming was his first love: obsessive, deeply rooted, but profound.

He remembers growing up on a farm in Uasin Gishu County and making money from that same land. In the small spaces between work, he cultivated dreams,that unbreakable habit of the young.

Now he is a big shot in the city, but the past still taps at his door. Like the running career he never quite pursued.

"I could have been a runner...