Lake Sergoit: A Salt Lick, a Hunter's Camp and a Christmas Crowd
By William Kiptoo
Lake Sergoit. Photo courtesy of Caesar’s Waterfront Resort, Moiben.
On Christmas Day, thousands of people now gather on the shores of Lake Sergoit, about 30 kilometres from Eldoret, to eat, take boat rides and spend the holiday with their families. Most of them come for the food and the breeze off the water. Few know that the lake has drawn people for a very long time, and for very different reasons.
A Salt Lick for Keiyo Cattle
Lake Sergoit, also called Charar Dam, sits at about 2,144 metres above sea level, fed by the Katalir stream and lying southwest of Kapkapai Farm, below Sergoit Hill. Long before any settler arrived, the Keiyo people brought their cattle here for “ng’enda,” the salt lick their herds needed. The salt lick gave the area its other name. According to a story first told by Libby Sharpp, a child born here to a Maasai mother and a Keiyo father, Chebisach, was named Charar after the salt lick itself (read the full tale of Charar).
A Hunter’s Camp
When the English settler and hunter A. C. Hoey came to the Uasin Gishu Plateau around 1906, it was the lake he chose for his base. In his own later account he wrote: “At that time, I made my standing camp at Lake Sergoit, and often I would spend the day on Sergoit Rock with my glasses watching the vast herds of game below me.” It was from that rock that he saw a white line moving slowly out of the Burnt Forest, which turned out to be the wagons of the first Afrikaner trek arriving in 1908 (Hoey’s account).
Hoey went on to own Karuna Farm and ran a hunting safari business called the Sergoit Stores. In 1908 H. C. Kirk joined him “at Sergoit on the shores of the lake” to run it, and in 1909 the business organised a lion hunt by Maasai moran for the former American President Theodore Roosevelt and his son Kermit (read Kirk’s story).
A Place of Dispute
Once the settlers took up the land, the lake that had served Keiyo cattle for generations became a source of tension over grazing rights. By the accounts I have gathered, the dispute led to Keiyo resistance around 1931, which continued until they were granted access and the boundary of what is now Elgeyo Marakwet was extended to Charar. After independence, the farms around the lake were divided, and Charar Settlement Scheme was allocated to former farm workers in 1982.
How the Keiyo Lost Lake Sergoit
From an earlier post of mine in the group, "Lake Sergoit (also known as Charar)".
The water resource at Lake Sergoit was the livelihood of the cattle of the Keiyo people in precolonial times. This is where they obtained “ng’enda,” the salt lick.
The whole area was also their grazing ground, although at great risk from the Maasai, the Nandi and the Karamoja. With the decline of Maasai power at the end of the nineteenth century, the Keiyo began to enjoy the freedom of peaceful grazing, until they lost their grazing grounds to the colonial government, the Boers and E. S. Grogan, owner of the Elgeyo Sawmills.
In February 1903, W. F. van Breda and his brothers arrived from South Africa and made their selections around Sergoit Rock. In 1904 van Breda applied to the colonial government for the land around Sergoit on behalf of himself and his two brothers. He stated that the application was made because of “having been told by private individuals and government officials of the wonderful Uasin Gishu Plateau and more especially about Sergoit rock at the foot of which there was a lake with four big rivers running into it and one running out.”
The brothers went on to survey the land and persuaded other settlers to stake claims on the Uasin Gishu Plateau. That is how the Keiyo lost their grazing ground and a very important source of water at Lake Sergoit.
On 16 March 1911, the Uasin Gishu Farmers Association was formed at a gathering at Sergoit.
In 1918 famine hit the Uasin Gishu Plateau. It was remembered as “Kenyitab kibichotit,” the year of locusts. The colonial government provided posho (maize flour) to the local people as famine relief.
A Waterfront Today
In 2018, Caesar’s Waterfront Resort opened on the lakeshore. Visitors come for roasted goat and tilapia from the lake, for fishing and boat rides, and for the view of Sergoit and Karuna hills across the water. Elders still say that the name Charar means “to flow” or “to overflow,” for the way water once spread across the plain after heavy rain (more on the name Charar).
The next time you stand on the shore, think of the cattle that came for salt, the hunter who watched from the rock, and the families who fought for the right to graze here. The lake has seen all of them.
Comments
Post a Comment