Why Kenya?. . . . . . . . . . . Why were my family and I in Kenya?

I have been asking this for a long time but could not find an answer. I could not ask either my Mum or Dad, as both have sadly passed away  some time ago. I will explain this mystery.

Some Background

My brother, my sister and I were all born In Bombay, my father in Uganda, and my mother in Kenya. My father studied in Belgaum, India, my mother in Bombay. My parents married in India, and they returned to Kenya after my younger brother Trevor was born.

Had they been alive, I could have asked them, so I had to play Sherlock Holmes to unravel this ‘Who Did it’? 

Here are some of the facts. I am sure you will be surprised by what his and my detective work uncovered. Over to Granddad, he has the same name as me.

The  Lunatic Express  By Simon Estelita (Senior)… 

In December 1895, George Whitehouse, the British engineer who was tasked to build the Kenya-Uganda Railway, sailed into Mombasa harbour with only a sketch of the route the railway was supposed to take. This was the trigger that changed my life and  the lives of many like me. 

I came down for breakfast, one sunny morning for my usual Indian tea and Gulab Jamuns.   Flicking through the pages  of the local paper, The Hindustani Times, I stopped mid-way when I noticed a large article. They were urgently looking for a bi-lingual English-Hindi individual who had both organisational and people skills to work for the British in the East African Protectorate to help build a railway. The suitable person should like working outdoors and the main job was to supervise thirty people working on the construction of the railroad. The responsibilities of the job included selecting individuals from India and then collaborating with them as their manager to smooth out any problems during their stay there. AM Jeevanjee had placed the advertisement in the paper.  

The article also stated that the person hired must be prepared to work for a period up to three years and must be available at short notice.  Compensation would include a salary of 300 rupees per month,  four weeks annual vacation and paid travel back to India every six months. Accommodation and food would be provided. 

This group would be one of many similar groups working on the construction project which had started out a few months ago and was running into problems with morale.  The individual would initially be based in Mombasa, but as the work progressed 'the base' would be relocated further down the line. The British were building a railway line from Mombasa to Kisumu on Lake Victoria.

It was such a crazy job offer but as I was looking for a fresh challenge and also wishing to get away from a relationship with my girlfriend which had just ended abruptly, it was an  opportunity to put my life back on to the ‘proverbial rails.’  I applied, got the job as probably no other Idiots had applied for it.

 What were my Credentials  ?

I had previously worked as a manager of a team of 10 people in the construction of a large railway bridge on the outskirts of Bombay. I was there for one year and had previous experience on construction projects.

What was the ‘Carrot’ in my Contract ?

The monthly salary of 300 rupees would be paid into my Bombay bank account, with a small proportion paid directly to me. What could I spend  the money there on? Food, drink, accommodation, yes in 4-star tents were provided. Tents, as the work progressed, would be relocated further down the ‘planned line.’  What the British had additionally done to entice me and my fellow countrymen to this beautiful, unspoiled country was that the Indian rupee would be the legal currency there and whatever that meant, Indian law would apply. 

I had one week to prepare myself as the ship was setting sail from Mumbai that Friday. The voyage to Mombasa would last 5 to 6 days. I was to have my new team of workers also on board and use the time afloat to build ‘teamwork’  and comradeship. The team of workers were Hindu, and I was the only ‘Goan’ on Board.

We left Mumbai after an emotional farewell from our families, little did we know  that many would not make it back.

Our Team

The workforce as you can imagine was masculine, so there were no ‘Female’ comforts at all….. you get my drift. 

I was informed that the project had started with two thousand Indians, but they were planning to offer full employment to between thirty to forty thousand workers. ‘Safety in numbers,’ you may think, though, after reading this I am sure you will have changed your mind.

Our Working Conditions

We were not landscape gardeners, we were building a railway. 

We had a built-in kitchen which consisted of two or three cooking places, each consisted of  three flat stones, and powered by wood, and a few pots. Our plate was a ‘Billy Can’,  and our cup was metallic. So, you can see, it was a fully furnished kitchen. I asked myself what else would I need, apart from cutlery, and of course we could always eat with our fingers. 

We were four to five in the ‘Luxury tents’ as we were the supervisors. The others had more protection and were manned by twenty men. Why, you may well ask, did we need protection?

Our Bed Fellows outside the Living Quarters!

They had forgotten to tell us who or what awaited us there. I will enlighten you shortly.  I will now tell you as supervisor I was considered to be just a cut above the other ‘coolies’, a derogatory term used by the British to describe the Indian workforce. However, I was not spared the hard manual work of digging, carrying, and whatever was needed to be done. The British were always superior, and above me there was a British officer dressed in his Khaki uniform. 

Let me first complete what our working hours. In Kenya, being on the Equator,  the sun rises at 6 a.m., and sets at about 6 p.m. Remember we had no electricity in our tents, and paraffin lamps  provided us with light at night. 

Sorry, I forgot to inform you about our friendly neighbours. They were not as fortunate as us living in tents. They lived in caves, or just outside. Most of them had four legs.  For safety they lived in large groups and were extremely fast and nimble. They were herbivorous and were often in their 'black and white striped’ pyjamas, yes, these were zebra. There were also different types of deer. These animals as soon as they sensed any sight of danger legged it. There were these birds. I had never seen these before in India. They were large, had long legs and a long neck, and were extremely fast. What was so interesting about these birds was there was no runway long enough for them to take off, and as a result spent all their time ‘grounded.’ These birds often ‘buried their heads in the sand’; had a powerful kick, laid eggs the size of a small football, cream white in colour. These birds were called ostriches.  Later on in the project we saw in the distance a ‘pinkish cloud,’ on the water. These were flamingos, and unlike the ostriches they were good flyers. Yes, in those early days we did not have the Internet,  so we could not identify all these strange creatures we had never seen in India.

In India we have cows and buffalo . The buffalo are tame and are at home in water.  Kenya had its own water buffalo, these also are herbivorous, but unlike our domesticated Indian variety, these are not tame. During this African adventure, many of my fellow workers did not realise this and paid with their lives. Water buffalo are large, have 4 short legs, large teeth and spend most of their time keeping cool and clean in a river or lakebed. They also have a deadly companion, or should I say predator, the crocodile. These creatures are good swimmers, and can live on land or in the water, and have many large teeth. They have a deadly spiked tail, with which they can knock a fully grown man down. 

This is not all, I have a lot to tell you who the rest of our neighbours were. Lions, leopards, cheetahs, elephants, rhinos, hyenas are the other residents in this multi-cultural environment. You do not need to go to a zoo or circus to see such a wide range of animals. Not to mention the numerous types of insects which although small, often carry germs.

The Landscape

I will give you a small Geography lesson now.  Kenya has a Rift Valley 80-km-wide, called the Great Rift Valley.  The steep natural rampart along the western rim of the Great Rift Valley in Western Kenya, West, and South of the town of Nakuru; it rises to more than 10,000 feet on the Equator.  Bridges had to be built to span sections of the escarpment, and rivers.   These few details, they conveniently left out on my job interview.

The job was extremely hard. When we started off in Mombasa, there were a few Arabs trading.  A few shops but not much else. Mombasa is the main port of Kenya and has seen for centuries Arabs and Indian traders. The British Colonial power subsequently exploited the African in the East African Protectorate.

The Size of the Project

The East African Protectorate was virgin land, with the exception of Mombasa. Everything needed for this project had to be imported. I have just explained how my countrymen provided labour for this project. The British deliberately did not include the poor African in this building process. 

What about the other resources that were needed for this hair brained adventure?  Britain was a long way from Mombasa, the entry port to the East African Protectorate. Every other major resource had to come all the way from the British motherland! Britain was a superpower’ on the water, and the phrase ‘Britannia rules the Waves’, was synonymous with it. The Suez Canal,’ was under administration from Britain, so all that was necessary could be shipped via the Suez Canal, without having to go around Africa.

This means, all the rolling stock for the railway was sent by ship and had to be assembled in Mombasa. To support this effort, warehouses had to be built. The rails, sleepers and all materials were sent by ship and reassembled initially at Mombasa by British know-how and engineers. Living quarters for them had to be set up. Food and other supplies needed for the workforce had to be sent and stored. Some of these provisions came from the Indian subcontinent. As the work progressed, these supplies, provisions, accommodations had to also be relocated down the line. This was no simple feat and required meritorious planning.

Kimnyole the King of the Nandi people in Kenya, who, before his death, prophesied about the British colonization of East Africa before it happened.

 He said. ‘ A huge snake that billowed smoke and fire would come from the Eastern lake and would go to quench its thirst on the Western lake.’  ‘This Snake‘  was  the 'Train.‘ billowing smoke and fire’  is the steam from the train. ‘Eastern lake’ is the Indian Ocean . ‘Western lake’ is Lake Victoria.

What is so special about Tsavo?

It is one of the oldest and largest parks in Kenya. Nearest town is Voi. This is near Mombasa where the railway line started, about seventy miles away.  It is about two thousand and fifty feet above sea level. It  now has its own railway station for its numerous inhabitants . Some of its exclusive inhabitants who rub shoulders with each other are. You will be surprised, it is like a 'Who's Who'! It is a designated a Green Belt  It is a much sought-after residential area.

No Tsavo is famous for a quite different reason. In fact, two of its inhabitants have acquired worldwide fame posthumously.

I will tell you their story

The Indian labourers here were Hindu. There were many deaths here because of natural causes, and other causes relating to the hostile environment they were working in.

Tsavo means 'place of slaughter' in the local language. That actually referred to killings by the Masai people, who attacked weaker tribes and took no prisoners, but it was still a bad omen.

In March 1898 British Lieutenant Colonel Henry Patterson led a team of Indian workers to build a railway bridge over the Tsavo River, part of the ‘Tsavo National Reserve’. The extreme harsh tropical terrain conditions resulted in many of the workers losing their lives. Hindus, as part of their religion, cremate their dead by placing the body on a wooden pyre, and then freeing the spirit of the dead by setting it alight. In the building of the railway on the Indian subcontinent, the Indian workforce was used. In India at that time, there was no problem cremating the dead, as this ceremony was in the village. Here they were in Kenya, full of wildlife, they did not wait for the fire to totally burn out, as they were afraid of the wild animals that frequented this area. Often the fires were put out by rain. This was an open invitation to the local four-legged inhabitants to investigate. These animals loved their 'barbecues’, especially when there was no fire.

In addition, in 1898, an outbreak of cattle plague resulted in the death of many cattle. At the same time, it was noticed that a number of workers did not return. They had not run away as there was nowhere else to run to.

Before Patterson’s arrival to supervise the construction work, rumours of killer lions had already started wildly circulating. In March 1898, just a few short days after his arrival, reports of some missing workers appeared on Patterson’s desk. Initially he took no action, but as days passed, news of more workers disappearing were also reported, and the rumours turned out to be a reality. There were no fingerprints/footprints to identify the killer but four legged animals, probably lions, were thought responsible. Fences were set up round the encampment, and fires were burning to ward off the animals. However, men still continued to disappear.

These attacks started off with one lion on the prowl. However, subsequently his flatmate got wind of the easy access to food and joined in. I have heard that normally lions turn into ‘man-eaters,’ when they become weak, and are not fast enough to catch their normal prey. Once the Lion has the taste for human flesh, it becomes his staple diet.

As they suspected from the number of workers taken that there must be at least two animals, Patterson then tried to hunt them. The lions with their excellent sense of smell and hunting prowess got wind of this, so they added him as a starter to their menu card.

Then he started his hunt for both these lions. His first success was on December 9, 1898, when he managed to shoot one of the lions. The lion however escaped and incredibly turned hunter and came looking for Patterson! This time however, Patterson completed the job, and shot the lion dead. In its death throes the lion managed to  leave the camp. The search party found the dead lion in the morning not too far from the camp. He then subsequently made short work of the second lion twenty days later, who was hit a number of times, before it died. Patterson was the pride of the camp for his double feat.

Paterson kept a detailed description of all the relevant facts in his logbook.

How did they become Famous Posthumously ?

The total number of people the two lions killed was never verified, though in his logbook Patterson states that in all 135 were taken away by the lions.  The logbook he used was the basis for his book. This was used as the basis for three films. It was also famous for a Lodge that was called ‘Man Eaters Lodge.’  

The Answer to my Question ‘Why Kenya?`

To support this major infrastructure project, you need administrators, labourers, security, and many other related skills. This is the reason I am sure that my grandfather came to Uganda and Kenya. That is why both of my parents were either born in Uganda or Kenya. This railway is also known as the Kenya Uganda Railway and was completed in 1902.

I survived my shortened stint in Kenya, it was hard and after 1 year I returned back to India. Realizing the great opportunity which existed in the developing East African Protectorate subsequently returned with Goan my wife, Luisa, to Kampala, Uganda, where my son Alex was born.  

So that Is why we three, Averill, Trevor, and I, landed in  Kenya!    

Simon Estelita