Wonders of Sergoit Hills

By William Kiptoo Sambul lies in what is now Kesses Sub-County of Uasin Gishu. Its land history follows a path that many farms on the plateau took after independence. First a settler estate was bought by a group of African farmers. Then came a long period of shared occupation without a survey. Last came years of disagreement and court cases when the land finally had to be divided into individual titles. The farm at the centre of the story is Sambul Farm, L.R. No. 11218/2, about 2,125 acres. According to the Environment and Land Court, it was bought from a colonial settler by a group of 35 members, who settled on the land before any formal survey had been made. The farm was not first cut into 35 surveyed and registered parcels. The members held recognised shares in the whole, and the precise boundaries of each share were left for later. That later came slowly, and in the meantime the farm changed. Some of the original members sold parts of their share to other people, who, in the wor...

By William Kiptoo Simba Hills Farm, known to the people who live there as Kanyesore Toloita, lies in Moiben, north of Eldoret, in Uasin Gishu County. On paper it is L.R. No. 8304, a farm the courts have described as measuring 1,680 acres. Its history began in the late 1960s, when the farm's employees set out to buy the land they worked. More than fifty years later, the question of who owns it is still before the courts. This account draws on the 2020 judgment of the Environment and Land Court, earlier High Court rulings and two Court of Appeal rulings. Those records contain two kinds of material: what the courts found, and what the parties claimed in evidence. The two are kept apart here, and where an account comes from one side only, it is identified as such. The registered owners named in the litigation were Sultan Hasham Lalji, Abdulaziz Kanji and Madatally Sidi. Mr Lalji was the central figure and gave most of the owners' evidence. According to his account, in 1969 he ag...

An overview of three accounts of return visits published in Habari, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa: "'n Safari in tyd" (A safari in time) in Habari 2005, a letter from Dave Lichtenstein in Habari 2006, and "Kenya Safari" by Peter Davies in Habari 2007. The first is in Afrikaans. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not a translation. It follows the earlier post Going Back: Return Visits to Eldoret, Sergoit, Turbo and Patatadraai , which covers the visits of 1992 and 2002. Between 2004 and 2006 three more groups of former settlers came back to the Uasin Gishu. One came overland by road from Pretoria, one was a Hill School old boy living in Australia, and one was a member of the Davies family of Sergoit. Each of them went looking for a house, a school or a grave, and each found the land now farmed by Kenyan families. Their accounts record what had become of many places this archive writes about, including Sergoit Rock, the Kruger farm and...

An overview of three accounts of return visits published in Habari, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa: "'n Droom of werklikheid" by Ria McCulloch (Habari 1992), "Kenia dagboek" by Ds Piet Grobler (Habari 1992), and an account of a family visit to Eldoret, Turbo and Patatadraai in December 2002 (Habari 2003). The first two are in Afrikaans. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not a translation. From the 1990s onward, settler families began to come back to see the farms, churches and graves they had left around independence. Their accounts in Habari are bittersweet, and they also record what had become of the old places, often in the hands of Kenyan churches, schools and families. Ria McCulloch, daughter of Wolfie Wolmarans, the principal of the Broederstroom school, came home "on the last stretch" through Timboroa and Ainabkoi, where the little station still looked as it had. At the old Van Rensburg house the garden was gone, b...

An overview of "Herinneringe aan Kenia" (Memories of Kenya) by S.C. Labuschagne, published in Habari 1992, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa. The original is in Afrikaans. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not a translation. S.C. Labuschagne, by then 86 years old, wrote after reading familiar names in Habari: Frank Arnoldi, Sonny Cloete and his sister Bonnie, Piet and Poppie Jordaan, Bokkie von Maltitz and "Miss Keese". She wanted to know who was still alive. Her short memoir tells of a family that lived for a while right under Sergoit Kop. In 1917 her father, Wessel Pienaar, left South Africa for British East Africa with her mother and their six children, on a doctor's advice that a different climate might help her mother, who was often ill. At Mombasa her father had to pay such a large deposit that money was very short. From Londiani the only transport to Eldoret was by ox wagon. Theirs had no proper tent, only laths with a canvas o...

An overview of "Herinneringe van Edward Steyn soos vertel aan sy seun Danie" (Memories of Edward Steyn as told to his son Danie), published in Habari 2003, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa. The original is in Afrikaans. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not a translation. Edward Steyn was the father of Danie Steyn, one of the main contributors to Habari. Late in life he told his son about his first years on the Plateau in the 1920s: threshing, road making, building the Plateau hall and farming at Sirikwa. He came to Kenya by boat from Beira with Oom Kosie, and found Nig Bappie and Jan Murphy already there. On the boat he met Percy van der Westhuizen and an old man named Hendrik Kok. From Mombasa they took the train together. Murphy and Bappie got off at Nairobi, Edward and Kosie rode on to Plateau station, and the Koks went on to Eldoret. By then the railway ran almost to Uganda and the Turbo line reached Bungoma in Kitosh, but the branch to Kital...

An overview of "Goeie ou dae" (Good old days) by Jurgens Joubert, published in Habari 1998, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa. The original is in Afrikaans. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not a translation. Jurgens Joubert grew up near Kitale, went to school in Eldoret and spent much of his working life as a Kenya Police officer on the Plateau, at Eldoret, Soy and Turbo. His short memoir mixes church weekends, schoolday names and the lighter side of police work. Several times a year the family drove from Kitale to Eldoret by ox wagon for communion at the Vergenoeg church, usually leaving on a Wednesday and doing the last stretch on Saturday morning. On one trip they slept under the wagon at Hoey's Bridge, where he mistook a dishcloth flapping on a thorn tree for a ghost. With them were Loet von Maltitz and his wife Sofie, his mother's sister. At the church an old man went round greeting everyone, and Jurgens heard him say "Dag, Gent...

An overview of "My skooldae" (My school days) and related memories published in Habari 1986, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa. The writer, a grandson of Sannie van Vuuren of Patatadraai, is not named in the scanned pages. The original is in Afrikaans. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not a translation. These short pieces come from a boy who grew up at Patatadraai, north of Eldoret on the Sergoit side, in the 1920s. They include one of the clearest explanations of where the name Patatadraai came from. The writer's grandmother, Tant Sannie van Vuuren, came to Kenya with the Van Rensburg trek in 1908 and brought a few small sweet potatoes with her. She planted them and they grew, the first sweet potatoes in the area, and many neighbours asked her for runners. Oom Frans van Deventer then named his grandfather's farm "Patatadraai". Some of the sweet potatoes, the writer says, grew so big that a baboon could not carry one away. Later ...

An overview of "Skooldae op Broederstroom" (School days at Broederstroom) by Hermanus Steyn, published in Habari 1986, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa. The original is in Afrikaans. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not a translation. Broederstroom, between Sergoit and Plateau, was the heart of the Afrikaans settlement on the Uasin Gishu, and its school educated generations of settler children. Hermanus Steyn, who also wrote the tribute to Thysie Davies, remembers his years there. The school began as a small church school, probably of the Dutch Reformed Church, since most of the teachers were members. Ds M.P. Loubser sometimes came to help, riding his horse Kolbooi. When Hermanus started, the school had two classrooms, a hostel, a house nearby fitted out as boys' bedrooms, and a two roomed building called Bethel, perhaps first meant for a minister, where an unmarried headmaster lived. Married headmasters and their wives ran the hostel, and th...

An overview of a set of memories by Sonnie Cloete published in Habari 1984, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa. The original is in Afrikaans. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not a translation. In Habari 1984 Sonnie Cloete of Concordia wrote a long, cheerful piece about the characters of the old Plateau and the Vergenoeg congregation. It is a collection of anecdotes rather than a history, and some of them are clearly told for a laugh, but it also records place names and people that appear nowhere else. Sonnie gives his own version of the day Sixty Four was named. Eldoret stood on Farm No. 64, about 64 miles from Londiani, the nearest station. A stream called the Eldora flowed into the Sosiani. The governor, he says, called the Uasin Gishu "the Eldorado of the North", and since the Nandi and Elgeyo liked names ending in "et", proposed Eldoret. After the meeting nearly the whole community went to Eddy's Bar, then sat down to lunch in th...

An overview of "Eldoret Sports Club", a history of Eldoret rugby compiled from information given by C.F. Schermbrucker and "Stompie" Jones, published in English in Habari 2000, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not the full text. Eldoret has produced great athletes in our own time. This short history from Habari 2000 tells of an earlier sporting story, the rugby club of "64", which for a time was among the strongest in East Africa. Rugby was already being played on the Plateau before C.F. Schermbrucker arrived in Eldoret in 1926. The club's first president was Tommy O'Shea. Turbo then ran its own side, and Eldoret often struggled to raise fifteen players. Soon after 1928 Turbo's players joined Eldoret, and from then on "64" came into its own. Schermbrucker remembered how he played his first game. He was on a farm when an old box body Rover drove up and Fred Pohl, a strang...

An overview of "Die goue jare van die firma Hughes Ltd" (The golden years of Hughes Ltd), by Koos Engelbrecht of Soy, published in Habari 1998, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa. The original is in Afrikaans. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not a translation. Hughes Ltd was the Ford dealer that, in the writer's words, slowly made "the blue might of Ford" take over the Uasin Gishu. Koos Engelbrecht, son of Faantjie and Gertie Engelbrecht of Mimosa Farm at Soy, worked there from the end of 1954 and was still in the motor trade 42 years later. In South Africa, he says, people still call him "Koos Hughes". The firm had branches in Nairobi, Nakuru, Eldoret and Kitale, led by J.J. Hughes and his wife Dorothy, who was also a member of the Legislative Council, with their son Peter, a well known rally driver, and their daughter Zelda. In December 1954, at the end of his last term at the Prince of Wales School, Koos was called to th...

An overview of "Victor Germishuis skryf" (Victor Germishuis writes), published in Habari 1997, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa. The original is in Afrikaans. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not a translation. Victor Germishuis grew up at Burnt Forest (Verbrandebos) and in Eldoret between the two world wars. His memoir is full of names of neighbours, teachers and workmates, and gives a clear picture of farm schools, communion weekends and young people's lives on the Plateau in the 1930s. His parents came from Barkly East in South Africa in 1912, sailing from Durban with relatives who settled around Nakuru and the Kinangop. His father served in the Belfield Scouts in the First World War, then bought two wagons and oxen and carted goods from Londiani to Eldoret, since there was no railway yet between Nakuru and Eldoret. Victor remembers place names on the old road: Arnoldi's Bridge, Erasmus Bridge, the Draaibos and the bamboo forest near T...