The Last Day: How Eldoret's Gereformeerde Church Was Handed Over in 1964

An overview of "Die laaste dag" (The last day), by a writer signing as "Viedas", first published in Die Kerkblad of the Gereformeerde Kerk on 17 February 1982 and reprinted in Habari 1984, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa. The original is in Afrikaans. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not a translation.

Eldoret once had two Afrikaans churches. The larger was the Dutch Reformed (NG) congregation of Vergenoeg. The smaller was the Gereformeerde Kerk, which, the article says, existed in Kenya for just over half a century, from 1909 to 1964. This piece tells the story of its last Sunday.

A church built in 1932

On 24 September 1932 the members moved into their new church building in Eldoret with great joy. The writer notes it was the first Gereformeerde church building in Central Africa, with fine cedar woodwork. Two years later they called their own minister, the young Ds Abraham Aucamp. At communion time families came from far away and camped for days on the church grounds. There were also funerals, among them that of Mrs Buys, wife of the second minister, whose grave the writer compares to Rachel's grave by the roadside.

Sunday 16 February 1964

By the time of independence most Afrikaners had left. On Sunday 16 February 1964 only two members remained to hand over the church: the elderly Oom Stoffel Roets and his wife, Tant Nonnie, who farmed on Farm 141, about ten kilometres from Eldoret, a farm named "Geluk" (Happiness). The church property, land, building and furniture, had been bought by the Africa Inland Mission for what the article gives as about R2,500.

When Oom Stoffel and Tant Nonnie arrived at half past nine, they found a crowd of at least 700 African Christians gathered at the church, more than had ever come to a service there. The president of the Africa Inland Mission, the Rev W.N. Parsons, had come especially for the occasion and greeted them with "You are welcome!" Oom Stoffel was led in as guest of honour to sit in the elders' bench for the last time.

The writer describes a "Pentecost" moment. The church was full, people pressed at the windows, and hymns were sung at the same time in four languages, Kikuyu, Luo, Nandi and Swahili. Oom Stoffel was asked to tell the history of the Gereformeerde Kerk in Kenya. The ceremony lasted four and a half hours, from ten in the morning to half past two. Oom Stoffel later wrote to Ds P.J. Opperman that they had spent the whole day at the church without a break.

Two ways of seeing it

For the old couple it felt like a funeral, the end of more than fifty years of a congregation's life, and they went home that afternoon full of memories. The writer closes with the Dutch poet Bilderdijk's lines that the past shines into the present, and the present holds what is to come. Read today, the story also shows the other side: the church did not close but passed into the hands of a growing African congregation. The building went on as a place of worship for the Africa Inland Mission and its African members.

Source: "Viedas", "Die laaste dag", Habari 1984, pages 14 to 15 of the PDF, reprinted from Die Kerkblad, 17 February 1982, Friends of East Africa. Read the original issue (Afrikaans). See also the guide to settler stories in Habari.