How railway opened up Kenya’s interior

[John Ashworth]

The lost art of letter-writing and how railway opened up Kenya’s interior

By PETER MWAURA
Posted Friday, March 16 2012 at 15:17
Daily Nation

On April 4, 1905, the Londiani station manager wrote to his boss, the traffic manager of the Uganda railway in Nairobi, begging for leave to travel to India to marry his sweetheart.

He began his letter thus:

“Most Honoured and Respected Sir, I have the honour to humbly and urgently require your Honour’s to relieve me of my onerous duties at Londiani so as to enable me to visit the land of my nativity, to wit, India forsooth.

This in order that I may take unto wife a damsel of many charms who has long been cherished in the heart-beats of my soul.

“She is of superfluous beauty and enamoured of the thought of becoming my wife. Said beauteous damsel has long been goal of my manly breast, and now am fearful of other miscreant deposing me from her loftly affections.

Delay in consummation may be ruination most damnable to romance of both damsel and your humble servant.

Promising to return to resume his duties and “perform also my natural matrimonial functions”, he declared:

“It is dead loneliness here without this charmer to solace my empty heart.” Saying he was “most humble and dutiful servant, but terribly lovesick mortal withal”, he signed himself as “Gokal Chand (B.A. (failed by God’s misfortune) Bombay University and now Station Master, Londiani)”

The profuse and flowery letter is a reminder of the lost art of writing love letters — written laboriously and sent by snail mail — in this day of electronic mail.

Gokal Chand’s missive is also a reminder of the Indian contribution to the building and running of the railway.

Not only did Indians provide labour for the railway, they also managed it.

In addition, they played an important part in the early economic development of this country. They set up shops and bazaars along the railway line.

The East African Protectorate extended from the coast to the Kikuyu escarpment. The territory from Naivasha to Mount Elgon was the Eastern Province of Uganda.

At the time of the construction of the railway, which started in Mombasa in December 1895 and reached Port Florence (Kisumu) on December 20, 1901, Uganda was what counted to Britain.

The Protectorate was only important in so far as it provided a road to Uganda.

And the Uganda railway was conceived and built as part of the major strategic consideration of retaining control of Uganda and the headwaters of the Nile, according to G.H. Mungeam, author of British Rule in Kenya 1895-1912.

The British were concerned with the French threat to the Upper Nile and were anxious to forestall them. But once the Uganda railway was built at a cost of £5.317 million, the question arose of making it pay.

Consequently, the Eastern Province was transferred to the Protectorate in March 1902 to bring the railway under one administration.

Then Sir Charles Eliot, who took over as the Commissioner in December 1900 from Sir Arthur Hardinge, conceived the plan to make the railway pay by introducing white settlers in the country.

He was supported by Harry Johnstone who was special commissioner for Uganda.

“Here we have a territory (now that the Uganda railways is built) admirably suited for a white man’s country,” he wrote. “This will be a source of profit to the United Kingdom.”

Although a few European settlers had been living in Kikuyu since 1896, it was not until November 1903 when Lord Delamere — Eliot offered him the post of Land Officer — obtained 100,000 acres that white settlement began in earnest.

The railway, which did not reach Kampala until 1931 but changed its name to Kenya and Uganda Railway in 1926, was undeniably instrumental in turning the Protectorate into the Crown colony named Kenya.

“It is not an uncommon thing for a line to open up a country,” Eliot later said, “but this line literally created a country.”

Postscript: The traffic manager, Uganda Railway, approved Gokal Chand’s leave application.

“When next I saw him,” he wrote, “a purdah woman shyly peeped out at me from the depths of his quarters. I wondered if she was as beautiful as her husband claimed! I shall never know.”

gigirimwaura@yahoo.com

[Kevin Wilson-Smith]

Nice story.

I am sure there is tons of material tucked away in the library!