Edward Steyn Remembers: Threshing, the Plateau Hall and Sirikwa Farm

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.

Arrival

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 Kitale was not yet built. The church in Eldoret had been built, though not yet its gallery. Later, as church caretaker, Edward helped build the gallery.

Threshing and roads

He lived either with Jan le Roux at Plateau or with Ds Loubser in Eldoret, depending on where he was working with the threshing machines. In 1926 they threshed in Trans Nzoia with machines provided by Rex Kirk, and the next year on the Uasin Gishu, starting at Burnt Forest with a man named Kohling and working through to the plains. These were stationary steam threshers drawn by oxen from farm to farm, and getting them through the hills was hard. The wheat was cut by hand and tied into sheaves, or cut with a binder. He also had his own oxen and took subcontracts on road building, ploughing a way through a landscape where there were only tracks between the anthills.

The Plateau hall

Edward also helped train the pupils at the Broederstroom school, which Wolfie Wolmarans and others had built. He says "we built" the hall at Plateau. A Shell godown at Turbo was taken down and carried to Plateau on wagons. To raise money, the young people's society, fifteen or twenty strong, put on a play, "Die drie van der Walts", at Plateau, Eldoret and Kitale, and even at Ol Kalou and Rumuruti. On the way to Kitale one night, with Wolfie driving, they came upon a giraffe in the road and stopped just in front of it, and the frightened giraffe jumped right over the car. They paid about £130 for roughly 100 acres bought from Freek van Niekerk, and the festival committee gave £10. Wolfie, a member of the Hervormde church while most of the others were Dutch Reformed, led the work. When it was finished there was some argument over what could be held in it, and it was agreed that it should be used for the Day of the Covenant. It stood near the Broederstroom school and was, he says, the only hall in Eldoret, so weddings were held there too.

Sirikwa farm

He farmed at Sirikwa with Jan Murphy and Archie Dry, with one and a half spans of oxen between them, while Murphy still did transport riding with two wagons. When they were nearly finished ploughing, Archie went down with blackwater fever. Edward had a motorbike and Archie a car with a broken wooden spoked wheel. Edward went into the veld for the roots of the wild grape, pounded them in a paraffin tin, boiled them and gave Archie the brew, a remedy he had learned from the Portuguese and from Africans when he worked on survey parties. He then fixed the wheel with pieces of wood and set out for the doctor at two in the morning. Dr Swanepoel, who came back with them, said he too had used the root. Archie was ill for six months. Just before sowing, Edward himself fell ill, and Jan Murphy was treated with Plasmoquine by Dr Fouché.

The same issue carries a tribute to Tant Martie Steyn, born in an ox wagon at Kitale on 3 September 1915, who with her husband Philippie Steyn farmed at Sergoit Kop until 1964 and was known in Eldoret for her roses.

Source: "Herinneringe van Edward Steyn soos vertel aan sy seun Danie", Habari 2003, pages 9 to 10 of the PDF, Friends of East Africa. Read the original issue (Afrikaans). See also the guide to settler stories in Habari.