The Moi House in Tambach

By Hillary Kosgey Arap Masut, from An Anthology of Memoirs

This is the Moi House as it stands today, following my personal visit, assessment, and photo documentation. Yes, this is the very place where Daniel arap Moi lived as a young man. From my interviews, I gathered that he came here around 1948. He immediately occupied this house with just a few belongings. At first, no one knew whether he was married until sometime around 1950, when a woman arrived carrying an infant. That was when the locals realized he had a family.

This same woman was often seen outside the house, doing her household chores. In one of my photographs, a tap still stands near the house, a tap whose water source has remained unchanged for decades. The water comes from a natural spring at Kipchesang, about 472 meters away. It is remarkable how this spring still flows faithfully from the same underground source.

A lokoiwet tree, an African olive tree, grows just above this spring. It still stands to this day. Mrs. Moi was often seen walking up that short stretch whenever the tap ran dry, fetching water from the upper Kipchesang spring.

The house itself is a simple, self-contained structure, built with thoughtful practicality. It had an Asian-style toilet, a compact kitchen, a small sitting room, and Mr. Moi’s bedroom. By the time Moi moved in, the house was already about a decade old. My informants estimate its construction to have taken place in the late 1930s.

The wooden door remains the same to this day. The window frames are made of wood and covered with wire mesh, similar to what one might see at a nyama choma joint today, serving as makeshift burglar proofing. Near the tap stands a cylindrical, bowl-shaped concrete structure, likely used to hold or collect water.

The house never had gutters. Rainwater simply dropped from the corrugated iron roof onto a cemented furrow below, which carried runoff from the kitchen and bathroom into the sewer. The age-worn remains of the structure still stand, its chimney rising from the small living space where no real fireplace was ever needed, since Tambach has always been a warm place.

Moi must have enjoyed the quiet charm of this location, the gentle warmth, the indigenous shrubs that surrounded the house, and the single Nandi flame tree that still towers nearby. That same tree, whose bright orange red flowers light up the landscape like a torch between September and October, once shaded the young teacher’s view.

It is easy to imagine Moi’s evenings here, a young man in his modest home, perhaps relying on a generator or at times, when there was no fuel, lighting up a simple hurricane lamp or a tamambul, the traditional homemade wick lamp.

Today, the house has been well maintained. It wears a new roof and a fresh coat of bright yellow paint. Yet beneath that cheerful color, one can still sense the texture of its original stone walls, keyed together with mud and a touch of cement more than eighty-seven years ago.

The Moi family eventually left Tambach around the time of the State of Emergency. After that, the woman once seen climbing the hill for water was never seen again.

Students and staff at Tambach remember Moi as a quiet, disciplined teacher, deeply religious and methodical in his approach. He taught mathematics, English, and religious studies, instilling in his pupils values of hard work and obedience. At a time when education was both a tool of liberation and a badge of privilege, Moi carried himself as a role model.

The Elgeyo Marakwet landscape itself has become part of the story. Standing on the ridge where the house sits, one looks out over the Kerio Valley, a vast and humbling view. Some locals like to say that Moi’s patience and long political endurance were forged by the escarpment’s silent majesty.

First shared in The Wonders of Sergoit Hills Facebook group.