THE UNTOLD STORY OF WHITE HIGHLANDS, ELDORET

 By William Kiptoo

On the fringe of Eldoret town, where the rhythm of modern life meets the hush of memory, stands an aging relic with a name that refuses to be forgotten: White Highlands Inn.

Set along Elgeyo Road in what was once the heart of Kenya’s colonial “White Highlands,” the inn is more than a building. It is a story carved in stone and cedar, one that speaks not just of bricks and beds, but of belonging, exclusion, and the slow turning of history’s wheel.

In the early 1900s, Eldoret was a new town born of conquest and ambition. The British colonial regime, seeking to reward white settlers and affirm racial superiority, designated vast swathes of the Rift Valley as The White Highlands—land reserved exclusively for Europeans.

It was in this climate of exclusion that the inn emerged. Back then, it wasn’t just a hotel—it was a social fortress for settlers. Local folklore recalls how Africans were only allowed in as kitchen hands, gardeners, or cleaners—never as guests.

Step onto the shaded veranda, past the cracked cedar beams, and you’ll feel it—the sense of a place caught in time. The bar still smells faintly of whiskey and varnish. The guest rooms, though simple, carry the shadows of another age. Local elders recall relatives who worked there, speaking of the “big white house” with both awe and resentment.

With Kenya’s independence in 1963, segregation ended on paper. The inn’s ownership eventually changed hands. Slowly, locals began to walk through the same front doors once barred to them. The transformation was quiet: church groups held retreats in the gardens, weddings replaced settler dances, and a new identity began to grow—layered over the old.

Today, White Highlands Inn is not a luxury resort. It’s not even a museum. But it offers something more valuable: unfiltered memory. As Eldoret rises into modernity—skyscrapers, malls, highways—this inn stands still, not out of stubbornness, but in quiet testimony.

Some come for the food, others for its calm atmosphere. But for those who know, they come to touch history.

“We were never allowed past the gate,” recalls one elder from Kimumu. “Now, I sit where the white man once dined, and I remember.”