Sergoit and Broederstroom in 1920: A Farm Map and a Youth Society Programme

An overview of two pages in Habari 1987, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa: a hand drawn map of the farms around Sergoit and Patatadraai, and the 1920 programme of the Vergenoeg youth society. Both are in Afrikaans and Dutch. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not a copy.

Two small pages in Habari 1987 bring the Sergoit settler community of a hundred years ago into focus: one shows where the families lived, and the other shows what they did together on their evenings out.

The map: "Ja, onthou ek Patatadraai waar ek groot geword het"

The map is a sketch by a former resident, with the note "Yes, I remember Patatadraai where I grew up". It shows the farms between Sergoit and Eldoret, with Sergoit Kop, the Sergoit sawmill and the road to Kitale. The farms are marked by the family names of the time, among them J.M. Davies near Sergoit Kop, Albert Steyn, Piet Jordaan, J.N. Mouton, Van Ryneveld, Gert van Rensburg, Gert and Hans Roets, Cornelius Laurence and Piet Botha. Further on come Wheeler's Drift and Dick Wheeler, the Enslin farms (Piet, Jan, Hans and others), Louis Nel and Nel's Bridge, Wilhelm du Plessis, Adam and Jan van Rensburg, Faan Eksteen, Gert van Vuuren, Koos Engelbrecht, Danie Bornman, Hennie Wessels, H. Bresler, the McCall farm, Ortlepp's farm and Tarlton. A school is marked among the farms, and Patatadraai lies near the Kitale road.

For anyone trying to match today's villages around Sergoit, Moiben and Kipkaren to the old settler farms, this sketch is a useful starting point, though it is drawn from memory and not to scale.

The youth society programme of 1920

The second page is the printed programme of the Christian youth society (C.J.V.) of the Vergenoeg congregation for April to December 1920. Meetings rotated between Sergoit, Broederstroom and the "Kerkplaas" (church farm). Each evening had recitations, readings, essays, short plays and music, and a debate. Among the debate topics were "Is it better to know something of everything or everything of something?", "Who spends more, the women on fashion or the men on smoking and sport?", "Is the world going forward or backward?", "Which is better, wealth or learning?" and "Is it desirable that women should have the vote?". The December meeting had speakers on Piet Retief, Paul Kruger and the Free State presidents Brand and Steyn.

The names on the programme are the same families as on the map: Davies, Jordaan, Roets, Mouton, Malan, Emslie, Steyn, Van Heerden, Pohl, Erasmus, Arnoldi, Von Maltitz and others. The note for the first meeting at Sergoit, on 17 April 1920, says food and a place to sleep would be provided, but cakes and beer from friends would be welcome.

Source: map of the Sergoit and Patatadraai farms and "Program van Werksaamhede van die Vergenoeg C.J.V., April to December 1920", Habari 1987, pages 15 to 16 of the PDF, Friends of East Africa. Read the original issue. See also the archive's post The Broederstroom and Sergoit Schools and the guide to settler stories in Habari.

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