How Patatadraai Got Its Name, and Other School Day Memories

An overview of "My skooldae" (My school days) and related memories published in Habari 1986, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa. The writer, a grandson of Sannie van Vuuren of Patatadraai, is not named in the scanned pages. The original is in Afrikaans. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not a translation.

These short pieces come from a boy who grew up at Patatadraai, north of Eldoret on the Sergoit side, in the 1920s. They include one of the clearest explanations of where the name Patatadraai came from.

How Patatadraai got its name

The writer's grandmother, Tant Sannie van Vuuren, came to Kenya with the Van Rensburg trek in 1908 and brought a few small sweet potatoes with her. She planted them and they grew, the first sweet potatoes in the area, and many neighbours asked her for runners. Oom Frans van Deventer then named his grandfather's farm "Patatadraai". Some of the sweet potatoes, the writer says, grew so big that a baboon could not carry one away. Later Oom Jan Nel lived on the farm, and the bridge built over the river there was named Nel's Bridge, which made it easy to cross after rain, since the Sergoit river came down strongly when it rained heavily.

Sonnie Cloete, in Habari 1984, gives a different reason: that in the Depression years there was nothing to eat there but sweet potatoes. Both stories agree on the sweet potatoes and on Frans van Deventer.

School at Oom Ben Mouton's

He first went to school at Oom Ben Mouton's, where lessons were mostly in English and the alphabet hung on loose sheets on the wall. Pupils read standing on the long bench, and a wrong word earned a quince switch on the calves. Later the sisters Johanna and Sophia Davies took over, and things went better, with Bible history and many hymns. Then came a Mr Visser from South Africa, who smoked while he taught. The boys learned to roll their own cigarettes from his tobacco, stretched break time by moving the mark of the roof's shadow, and went swimming in the river, dodging across to the other bank when he came after them with his switch. Mr Visser was transferred to Burnt Forest. His successors, Miss du Plessis and her sister Sarah, stopped the swimming, and when the writer and his friend Okkie Nel hid in the maize field, she made them write "I must not leave the school premises without permission" five hundred times. He and Okkie also smeared the mud floor of the school with fresh cow dung in neat patterns.

Ds Loubser and communion

Around 1927 Ds Loubser was the minister in Eldoret and visited everyone, member or not, by donkey cart or ox cart. At communion the families came by ox wagon, pitched their tents in a row around the church on Friday, held a service that evening and preparation on Saturday, took communion on Sunday and packed up on Monday.

Oom Danie Bornman and the leopard

A leopard began taking pigs and dogs, and the neighbours went after it along the river with their dogs and small rifles. The leopard went into one of the old "Maasai holes" by a big wild olive tree and climbed the tree. When Oom Danie Bornman went too close, it sprang on him. His thick cork helmet saved him: the leopard bit the helmet and cork flew everywhere. Everyone fired and missed, the dogs drove it off, and Oom Danie was carried home with deep scratches on his shoulders and back that took a long time to heal. A commando of fifty dogs and fifteen guns hunted all the next day without finding it. A few days later young Frans Nel hid in the reeds and roared like a leopard during Sunday family prayers, and was lucky to escape both the stones and a hiding.

Dingaan's Day

Every 16 December the Afrikaners gathered on Oom Ben Mouton's farm. The laager commandant, Oom Hans Nel, drew the wagons into a laager with an open space in the middle and canvas stretched over it. The 15th was sports day, followed by a concert, then the commemoration itself, and on the 17th everyone went home.

Source: "My skooldae" and related notes, Habari 1986, pages 33 to 35 of the PDF, Friends of East Africa. Read the original issue (Afrikaans). See also the archive's post Who Were They, Where From, Where To? The Stone Holes of the Uasin Gishu and the guide to settler stories in Habari.