Paul Kite Arap Tiren: An Early African Farmer of Iten and Moiben

First posted in our Facebook group by Hillary Kosgey Arap Masut, and later shared by Henry Kibiwott Chebii. The original author of this account has not been identified. Please read the editor's note at the end.

First shared in The Wonders of Sergoit Hills Facebook group on 10 November 2024.

Paul Kite Arap Tiren is remembered as one of the first and most prominent African commercial farmers in Elgeyo and Uasin Gishu, and as the father of Silas K. Arap Tiren, the former Member of Parliament for Moiben.

From Farm Labourer to Farmer

According to the account, Tiren's farming career began in 1927, when he took a job as a farm labourer earning three shillings a month. He worked in many roles, including shamba boy, kitchen boy and tractor boy, and the experience he gained gave him an idea that changed his life.

He left his job to farm on his own. He had no capital except a borrowed plough and oxen, and even the first seed he planted was borrowed. He sowed wheat on two acres of idle land, sold his first harvest to his former employer and paid off his debts. His own Elgeyo community, including his father and the local chief, at first opposed him, feeling that cattle were being misused for ploughing. With the help of the District Commissioner, S. Hopkins, he was allowed to continue. To win his father over, he gave him gifts, including a good house.

As his acreage and harvests of wheat and maize grew, some neighbours became jealous, and he turned to business as well. He opened shops at several trading centres, bought a posho mill and more cattle, and later a second hand Fordson tractor.

Growth and the Moiben Farm

The account says that in 1941 he built a permanent house on his first 150 acres at a cost of £1,300, and that by 1949 he held over 1,000 acres at Iten, with two tractors, a combine harvester, ploughs and a planter. In 1949 he won a contract to supply food to prisons, schools and hospitals across the district, and soon bought two taxis. In 1962, with a loan from the Land Settlement Board, he bought an 858 acre farm at Moiben for £7,000, where he grew wheat and maize and kept 50 head of Red Poll and Boran cattle.

Readers who knew him add to the picture. Richard Kiprutto remembers Mzee Tiren as a hardworking, no nonsense man who owned two large farms in Uasin Gishu, one near Moiben centre and another near Kapsubere. He also owned Paul's Club, which stood where Tachasis Girls' School is today. He names him among the great sons of the land, alongside William Chemweno, Kimwatan Kabuliot, Atanas Kandie and Kibogy.

Editor's Note

This story is valuable, and there is no doubt that Paul Tiren was among the first and most prominent African farmers of this region. But parts of the account should be read with care.

First, the dates. The settler farms of Moiben and the rest of Uasin Gishu were only opened to African buyers around independence. Africans could not buy land in the so called White Highlands until about 1960, and most transfers took place after 1963 through the settlement schemes and land buying companies. Whatever Tiren farmed before then would most likely have been in the Elgeyo reserve around Iten, under customary tenure, not on settler land. The 1962 Moiben purchase fits the period when the first farms began to change hands, but the earlier claims, such as being "a successful farmer in the Rift Valley" in 1941, need that context.

Second, the figures. Owning "over 1,000 acres" at Iten by 1949, with a combine harvester, and a house costing £1,300 in 1941, would have made him exceptional for any African farmer of the time. They may be true, but they read like the kind of praise often found in profiles of the period, and they are presented as facts without any source. Until they can be checked against land records, newspapers or family papers, they are best read as part of how he was remembered rather than as established fact.

The account also does not say where it was first published. If the original source can be traced, it will help to settle these questions.