Florence Bouwer Remembers: From the 1908 Trek to Chepkoilel

An overview of "Florence Bouwer skryf" (Florence Bouwer writes), the memories of Florence Bouwer, born Emslie, dated 15 September 1989 and published in Habari 1991, 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.

Florence Bouwer was a small girl when her family came with the Van Rensburg trek in 1908. She wrote these memories eighty years later, partly from what she remembered and partly from what her older sisters told her. Her account takes us from the trek itself to the first school at Broederstroom, the early church, and a farm near Eldoret called Chepkoilel.

The trek of 1908

As she remembered it, the Van Rensburg trek was the biggest of the treks, with about seventy families. Her father, George Emslie, came with her mother and seven children, along with families such as the Jordaans, Roets, Van der Merwes, Smits, Steyns and Davieses. She quotes a letter from Oom Frikkie Smit about the journey: "there was love". Some families left the farm Vogelfontein on 19 June to take the train from Machadodorp to Delagoa Bay, and reached Nakuru in July.

At Nakuru, Frans Arnoldi gave them a place to stand their oxen and wagons on his farm, Menengai. It was there, she writes, that Ds J.M. Louw arrived as the first minister, held the first services under a tent of wagon sails "like a tabernacle", baptised the children and elected the first church council in August 1908.

On 14 September 1908 the wagons were ready, but the oxen were untrained and the heavy wagons would not move until the men made a plan together. Near the Rongai river they met Maasai moran armed with spears, who came in peace and wondered at the white people and their wagons. From Eldama Ravine the men cut a road through the forest with axes and picks. She calls it a nightmare. On 19 October the wagons formed a laager at a drift where Tom Davies stayed behind. The next day the men rode out to choose farms, with Oom Jan van Rensburg having first choice, and on 21 October each family trekked to its own place. Jaap Steyn went on alone to the thorn country at Soy and called his farm "Woestalleen", but died of fever soon afterwards.

The first home

Her father took land beside a river, with Oom Abel Erasmus further up the same stream. The children crossed the river on the thick roots of the great waterberry trees and ate their blue purple berries. Her father built a small dam of poles, stones and sods and dug a furrow along a ridge to bring water near the house for a garden. The first house was a "hartbeeshuisie" of sods with a grass roof, and later a stone house that she thought might still be standing.

She remembers the land as wild and empty of people but full of game: hartebeest, zebra, ostrich, oribi, reedbuck and bushbuck, with lions, leopards, wild dogs and hyenas in the bush. One night, with her father away working, a lion came roaring along the road from the Elgeyo reserve. The family pulled the cow and cats into the kitchen and hung a safari lamp outside, and in the morning the lion's tracks were a few steps from the house. On 5 November they began ploughing, and within a month planted wheat, oats and maize. The first plough shares were cast iron and broke on stones, so they were taken to Oom Abel Erasmus to have an iron tip fitted.

School and church at Broederstroom

The children walked to school at Broederstroom, on land she believed was given by Oom Flip Malan, with a small parsonage and a store. A Dutch mission society under Ds Tichelaar began the school, which was first called the Bwana Loubser Mission, and Ds M.P. Loubser gave them their first lessons. Bokkie von Maltitz taught there for many years. The school building was also the meeting place for communion, services, debates and concerts, with people coming from as far as Sergoit, such as Piet and Poppie Jordaan. When she wrote, the building was being used to train African teachers.

She lists the teachers and young ministers who followed: Miss Bruwer, Ds Lourens and his wife, Piet Pienaar, Gawie Viljee and Freda Keese at the Sergoit school, Ds Wentzel and others. The Dutch Reformed church in Eldoret, built by Flip Malan, Albert Stieger and others, was dedicated in 1921, and she was among the first young people confirmed there, taught by Ds Loubser and G.J. van Zijl.

The early Plateau

She recalls the first government officers, stationed on Farm 84 on the Nandi border with a constable at Sergoit lake, and the first shops: Mr Camp at Eldoret, the butcher Micky Eywaz, Smith and Mundell, and the Lourens store of wood and clay that was post office, shop and bank at once. Mr Kirk of Kitale opened a shop at Sergoit. She explains two place names on the old wagon road: Suikervlei, where a load of sugar fell into the water from Jan de Waal's Scotch cart, and Wolwespruit, where hyenas ate the oxen's leather thongs at night.

She also mentions, in her account, that news came one morning that Mr van Breda had been killed in his garden near the Elgeyo forest, which unsettled the community for a while. The early years brought horse sickness, then East Coast fever in the cattle and heartwater and worms in the sheep. When the First World War began, the last bag of flour was sold, and flour later came from Bombay.

Will Bouwer and Chepkoilel

Florence married Will Bouwer on 9 May 1923, his birthday, riding to Eldoret on horseback. They were married at the magistrate's office, because a church wedding was not yet legally valid. Will, born in Molteno in 1896, had come north with the Rhodesia Commando in the First World War and had farmed near Eldoret since 1919. After some years on a forest farm about forty miles from Eldoret, where Gert de Jager set up a sawmill, they bought a farm near Eldoret named "Chepkoilel", which she says means "cold water". The old bamboo church of the first settlers had stood on that land, part of Oom Koos Prinsloo's farm. They farmed there for thirty years.

Will worked on district roads and then for many years with the Kenya Farmers Association, where Koppie Eksteen succeeded him, and served twelve years on the Legislative Council before independence. They left Kenya in 1962. She ends by saying how good it is, when old Kenya friends meet, to talk about the same things again.

Source: Florence Bouwer (born Emslie), "Florence Bouwer skryf", Habari 1991, pages 14 to 17 of the PDF, Friends of East Africa. Read the original issue (Afrikaans). See also the guide to settler stories in Habari and the archive's post on Chepkoilel.