Going Back, Part Two: Return Visits of 2004 to 2006 to Eldoret, Burnt Forest and Sergoit

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 the old Davies farm.

By road from Pretoria, May 2005

The writer of "'n Safari in tyd" was born in the old European Hospital in Eldoret and left Kenya with his parents in 1961, at the age of seven. For years his memories of the country had been fed by stories told around braai fires, until he wanted to see for himself whether they were true. On Sunday 1 May 2005 a convoy of three four wheel drive vehicles and a trailer left Pretoria with nine men, most of them former Eldoret people: Boet Engelbrecht and his sons Manie and Gert, Eloff van der Westhuizen, Herbert Murphy, the writer and his brother in law Anton Grové, who led the trip, and two friends, Vincent Erasmus and Albert Schutte, the navigator.

They drove through Botswana, Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania, crossing into Kenya at Lunga Lunga on 8 May. Boet's wife Griet, his daughter Roelien and his niece Marie Eksteen, who was born at Kakamega, flew in to meet them at Mombasa. On 10 May they drove up through Tsavo and Nairobi, down into the Rift Valley, past Londiani, across the equator and through Timboroa to Eldoret, which they reached at dusk.

They camped at Naiberi River Campsite near Kaptagat, where the old night watchman had once worked for the "boere" and still remembered a little Afrikaans. In Eldoret they found the Gereformeerde Kerk somewhat neglected and used as classrooms, while its parsonage was in better shape and still home to a minister. The Dutch Reformed church, the NG Kerk, looked inside and out much as the writer remembered it, down to the same mats. The rugby club's clubhouse, pavilion and field were still in use, with team photographs from the first half of the century on the walls of the billiard room. Eldoret itself had become a busy town with an international airport, a university and, by an estimate of 2000, about 249,000 people.

Part of the group went to the Turbo area, where Boet and Herbert found the way to the old Engelbrecht farms as if they had been there the day before. Oom Manie Engelbrecht's first farmhouse, where Boet's mother Elizabeth had lived and died, was only a heap of rubble. The writer then took the dirt road from the Kitale road towards Moiben, over a low water bridge his father had built, to his parents' farm, Hillview, on a slope with a view of the Cherangani hills. The house was run down, with cardboard in the broken windows and washing hanging from them, and the big acacia trees were gone. It now served as a hostel for a private school housed in his father's old stores. For a moment, he writes, standing in the front door, he heard familiar voices from the past.

He also visited the Hill School, where he had been a pupil, and the old cemetery in Eldoret, where the group repaired the damaged marble on the grave of his grandmother Elizabeth. On Friday 13 May he looked in at the buildings of the old European Hospital where he and his sister were born. The group then went on by Lake Baringo, Nakuru and Nairobi, and home through Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe, a journey of about 11,700 kilometres in all.

He ends by quoting Elspeth Huxley, "We came to Kenya, and we made it our home", and compares the old farm buildings to the flag and footprints left on the moon: signs that the settlers were once there, in a landscape that now belongs to a new generation with its own culture and way of life. He was content, he says, that his childhood memories of Kenya were not fantasy.

Dave Lichtenstein, October 2004

Dave Lichtenstein, a Hill School old boy (1950 to 1956) living in Sydney, wrote to Habari 2006 about a trip he made in October 2004 with his wife Rose-Ann, after a Hill School reunion at Scottburgh in South Africa. Their guide was Darsi Ruysenaar, another old Hill School boy. From Nairobi they went to the Duke of York School, Naivasha, Gilgil, Thomson's Falls and Nakuru, then up to Eldoret by way of Eldama Ravine and Kaptagat. At Kaptagat they passed the old Kaptagat Preparatory School and the Kaptagat Arms Hotel, now African run and in good condition, though of the Kaptagat Club only the walls of the squash court were left, standing in a shamba.

In Eldoret they stayed two nights at the Eldoret Club, where they met Paul Scott, headmaster of the Hill School after independence. At the new Hill School most of the old buildings were still standing, including the water tower, and in the dining rooms they found the murals painted by Gwen Bristow, one of the Afrikaner trek to the Uasin Gishu and one of the Mad Hatter's tea party, and even an old desk with its inkwell. At the site of the Old Hill School only two sets of concrete steps and some trees seemed to remain from their time. He also noted the Uasin Gishu Arts Society building, the Eldoret Sports Club with its rugby posts, the railway station, KFA and Unga, the old Roxy and Lyric cinemas, and the Highlands School, all still recognisable.

The family's last farm had been at Burnt Forest. The house was still there, without its kitchen or garden, and the present owners let them in. At the dam they met the daughter of their former headman, and learned that most of the people who had worked for them had died or moved away. The Jorgensens' house nearby was a ruin, as was the old Keben Spa Hotel, though the mineral water still came out of the ground and still tasted good.

Then they went to Sergoit to stay with Hettie Tooley (born Kruger) and her husband Dave, who ran a homestay on the property, while her brother Fanie and his wife Carole farmed. The property took in Sergoit Rock, where part of the Soy herd of Rothschild giraffe could now be found. He and Darsi climbed the Rock and re-enacted the story of Cecil Hoey, who looked from it towards Burnt Forest and saw what he first took for clouds of dust and then found to be the covered wagons of the Afrikaner trek coming onto the Plateau. From there they went on to Kitale, Soy, where the club was being turned into a hotel, Turbo, where Darsi found his family's old farm, and Kipkarren, where Dave failed to find his own.

Peter Davies, August 2006

In "Kenya Safari", Peter Davies describes a four week trip in August 2006 with his wife Ona, his son John, and Janssen and Linda, which he calls a personal pilgrimage. After Mount Kenya, Thomson's Falls and Lake Nakuru they spent two nights at Lake Baringo, where a young Kalenjin guide, Francis Cherutich, took them walking along the cliffs. When Peter offered him 1,000 shillings to show them a Chemosit, the Nandi Bear, the guide could not believe that a white visitor knew the name, and it became a running joke.

The next day, "the big one", they crossed the Kerio Valley, had breakfast on the bridge over the Kerio, climbed the escarpment to Tambach and Kamariny, and passed Iten. Then Sergoit Rock came into view, standing "as it always has". Nearby they saw what they took to be Piet Davies' old house. Following the old road towards the Plateau, they passed Flip Prinsloo's old house and Sonny Cloete's, still surrounded by trees, reached the crossroads at the bluegum plantation, which was still there, and from there could see Jim Davies' house and the old place of Tant Poppie Jordaan. There were still large fields of wheat, and the people, he writes, seemed to be doing quite well.

When this passage was first shared in The Wonders of Sergoit Hills Facebook group, William Kiptoo noted that the route runs between Kaptuli and Chepkoilel (Kabao): Flip Prinsloo's former home is now Kaplogoi, and Sonny Cloete's is now Koitoror, so the Davies homes must have stood nearby, not far from Sergoit Hill. Readers who can identify the Davies and De Waal homes are welcome to say so.

Near Eddie de Waal's old house they lost their way among new tracks, until an old man who had heard they were looking for the farm flagged them down. He introduced himself as Alexander, said he had once been a driver for the De Waals, and took them straight to the farm. After 44 years, Peter writes, "we had come home, but home was no longer there." The forest they remembered had gone, and except for the grain store, now a school, and one outbuilding, everything had changed. A few families lived in the old house and invited them inside. Their childhood bedroom was blackened by smoke from cooking fires, and he found the visit deeply emotional. The dam was still intact, and the cattle dip built by Steve Kruger in 1950 was still in use and in perfect condition. The land was divided into plots of maize. It was some consolation, he says, that the families of most of the people who had worked for them seemed to be doing reasonably well. Almost all the farm workers of his time had died, but they did meet the very old wife of Kiplagat, who had worked in the house. They drove away in silence, as they had in 1962.

In Eldoret they found the Highlands School, now Moi Girls High School, the Hill School still going strong, with the name of the headmaster Arthur Brindley still on the board, and the NG Kerk and its parsonage. The town itself he found crowded and run down compared with his memories.

Why these accounts matter

For readers in Sergoit and Moiben today, these visits are a record of how the settlers' places looked a generation after independence, through the eyes of those who left. They also name people who are often missing from settler writing, such as Alexander, the old man who guided the Davies family to their farm, the guide Francis Cherutich, and Kiplagat's wife, who worked in the Davies house. Their memories of the same farms would complete the story.

Sources: "'n Safari in tyd", Habari 2005, pages 7 to 12 of the PDF; Dave Lichtenstein, letter from Australia, Habari 2006, pages 11 to 13; Peter Davies, "Kenya Safari", Habari 2007, pages 3 to 6; Friends of East Africa. Habari 2005, Habari 2006, Habari 2007. See also the archive's posts Cecil and Gladys Hoey and Thysie Davies of Sergoit, and the guide to settler stories in Habari.