The Uasin Gishu Plateau in 1911: The Land Ranger's Report

An overview of "The Uasin Gishu: An Economic Survey by the Land Ranger (1911)", part of an article by A.U. Tannahill in the East African Review of October 1932, reprinted in Habari 1990 and again in Habari 2002, the newsletter of the Friends of East Africa. This is a summary for readers of this archive, not the full text.

In 1911 a government Land Ranger toured the farms of the Uasin Gishu Plateau and wrote a report for his superiors. It is one of the earliest official snapshots of the settlement, written just as Farm 64 was becoming Eldoret, and Sergoit appears in it again and again.

Stores and post offices

There were four stores on the Plateau: the Sergoit Store, run by A.C. Hoey close to Lake Sergoit; Kemp's store on Farm 64; Haji Nur Mahomed's store on the Sergoit to Londiani road, sixteen miles south of Sergoit; and Esmail Bhanjee's store at the boma on Farm 84. Almost everything could be bought at them, and the Sergoit Store was also an agent for farm implements. Post offices were at Kemp's store on 64, at the Sergoit Stores and on Mr Lorimer's farm, No. 45. Telegrams went from 64 by heliograph to Nandi. The Ranger notes with pride that a letter posted in Scotland on 12 January reached him on the Plateau in early February.

Where to put a town

About 24,800 acres had been reserved for government use, mostly to find the best place for a town. The Ranger thought Farm 64, of about 2,900 acres, was the most central and best suited, and administration offices were already going up there, though it had no timber and hardly a stick of firewood. He expected another trading centre beside Lake Sergoit.

Roads, outspans and game

The roads were nearly impassable in the rains, but the Public Works Department was repairing the Londiani to Sergoit road, used by about 75 wagons a month. He lists the distances: about 55 miles from Londiani to the first outspan, then on past the junction with the boma road to Haji's store, and nearly seventeen miles more to the Sergoit Store at the lake. From the post office at 64 to the Sergoit Store was a little over eight miles. Of the three outspans set aside, only the one near Farm No. 1 was of any use.

Game was still everywhere: Jackson's hartebeest, zebra, oribi, duiker, reedbuck, a few eland, waterbuck, lion, an occasional rhino, hippo in the Nzoia, giraffe, and visiting elephant and buffalo. He also complains about grass burning, which had badly burned two men that season.

"No natives living on this Plateau"

The report says that because there were no Africans living on the Plateau, all labour had to be brought in, mostly from Kavirondo, and that workers kept running away, complaining of the cold. The plan was to bring in several Elgeyo families with their stock, since some Elgeyo had become good farm workers. Readers of this archive will recognise this as the colonial view of an "empty" Plateau. Other accounts, including Elsie Cloete's "Uninhabited but not unclaimed" in Habari 2012 and the archive's posts on the Sirikwa, Maasai and Nandi, tell a different story of how the land was used and by whom.

The settlers in 1911

The Ranger took a careful census of the white population. The figures are hard to read in the scanned copy, but they appear to match the count given in Habari 2010 for the Plateau at about that time: 153 men, 96 women and 236 children. Half the children were under ten, and he urged the Education Board to open a school soon, noting that a Mrs Steyn had just started a small school for her own and neighbours' children. Several thousand fruit trees had been planted. He ends by saying the prospects of the Plateau, for both stock and crops, were not excelled by any other part of the Highlands, and that a railway was essential.

Source: A.U. Tannahill, "The Uasin Gishu: An Economic Survey by the Land Ranger (1911)", East African Review, October 1932, reprinted in Habari 1990, pages 6 to 8 of the PDF, and Habari 2002, page 17, Friends of East Africa. Read the original issue. See also the archive's post The History of the Uasin Gishu Plateau: Sirikwa, Maasai and Nandi and the guide to settler stories in Habari.