A foam mattress, a plastic barrel, a few sacks of clothes, two wooden chairs and an executive carry case on wheels: Anna Nyambura, 43, stands by the side of the road next to a heap of possessions thrown together as if for a bric-a-brac sale.

But far from being surplus to requirements, they are the only things she and her mother – her only family – could rescue from their home in Kenya’s Rift Valley before it was torched, on December 30, along with their crops.