Kambi Simba: The Lion Camp of Moiben

Shared by William Kiptoo for those who have been looking for the origin of the name Kambi Simba in Karuna/Meibeki, Moiben. From "Notes on the Old Days in Eldoret" by Mrs Dorothy Hughes, née Ullmann, from the scrapbook of Les Tucker, printed in the Habari 2002 newsletter of the Friends of East Africa.

First shared in The Wonders of Sergoit Hills Facebook group on 24 July 2025.

John Willie Hosking, a former Provincial Commissioner, spoke of his house at Moiben as "Kampi ya Simba," the lion camp. In the early days he saw pugmarks in the cement of a building under construction. Later he shot a lion at one corner of the building. He looked round, saw another in a different place and shot again, then shot at yet another. He did this seven times, and in the morning he found seven dead lions.

His wife, very Irish and fey, believed in the "little people." She said Moiben had a haunted house, and felt her hair rise whenever she stood in a certain place. Her sceptical husband slept in the room, and the next morning woke to find his bed on the other side of the room.

Seven lions in one night may have grown in the telling, as such stories do. Today Kambi Simba is a village name in Moiben.

See also Karuna.

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