Machakos postponed her dreams for a century

By AMOS KAREITHI

The green roof supported by a solitary pillar is finally kissing the ground after a century’s waiting, standing aloof to the elements of the weather. Even in its age, the galvanised sheets are without a hole, as intact as the day John Ainsworth left the station. This dying relic is one of the few in Kenya, having survived the era of intermittent cattle raids, epidemics, famines and droughts, two world wars and three successive governments.

David Ototo, a civil servant who works at the DC’s office in Machakos displays a traditional basket made of grass (Kiinga), which is believed to have been left in the house by the colonialists. The two sticks were used to stash and pack cereals inside the container. An antique clock left behind by the colonialists. [PHOTOS: AMOS KAREITHI/STANDARD]

The doors standing ajar, its cracked floor buried in ankle depth dirt and discarded debris are a bitter reminder of the well heeled top officers, who saluted every time they ventured into Kenya’s first administrative headquarters. The donkeys have died off, and the heavily armed guards recalled, leaving Machakos and its decayed remnants of historical relics forgotten: the doors to the most harrowed offices unhinged and unlocked.

Although prying eyes no longer pop inside the derelict building, it still holds some surprising secrets for a visitor who will not mind the dust and heaps of an anthill right in the middle of what was once an impressive living room. An empty quiver from decades of hard battles broken, discarded topographical maps, torn pages of ancient books and a military cape with a missing peak make up an odd collection reliving the days when Kenya was being put together.

Long distant traders

But the most enduring of the relics is a small, guard shaped grass basket, Kiinga, which has miraculously weathered many storms and could have been privy to some secretive deals more than 100 years ago. Long before the roving bands of Imperial British East Africa Company ventured to the place today called Machakos, after an illustrious prophet, Masaku, an international market still existed.

The Kamba people had established themselves as long distant traders ferrying ivory and other goods to the coast through the torturous routes that were later adopted by caravans of Arab slave traders. When Imperial British East Africa company officials started passing through Machakos on their way to Uganda, Sanderson Beck, in his book, East Africa: 1700-1905 reckons that it cost 250 pounds to pay a porter to ferry a tonne of load from Mombasa to Buganda, a 700 mile journey that could be undertaken in 76 days.

Machakos was first identified as a viable station by Fredrick Jackson in 1889 when he established a fort and later reinforced by Fredrick Lugard in 1890. This was before Ainsworth transformed it into the first administrative station in East Africa by IBEA. To replenish their caravans with food and other trade goods, IBEA established stations along the caravan route with the most prominent ones being at Kibwezi, Machakos and Kikuyu. Although some historians argue that the stations were established to offer security, Beck offers an interesting aspect, indicating that the agents used their superior arms to rob the natives.

He explains that the agents of the IBEA used their superior firepower to raid native communities as they looted grains and livestock instead of buying. Disgusted by such thievery, Gerald Portal in a letter to his wife in 1892 wrote, "By refusing to pay for things, by raiding, looting, swashbuckling, and shooting natives, the company have turned the whole country against the white man." Perhaps this explains why John Ainsworth saw it fit to establish a fort in Machakos in 1887, a place encircled by Kiima Kimwe, Iveti, and Mua hills to thwart attempts by the arrow wielding Kamba warriors from pursuing their stolen property.

Such stations at the time were supposed to serve as depots for goods and for buying and supplying passing caravans with food, but the relationship between the whites and the host communities was frosty. In October of 1892, the station had to buy 8,000 lbs of food from the natives and was further required to supply 350 rations for 30 days, forcing some of the agents to steal the food instead of buying from locals. The security situation was such that between 100 and 120 men were needed to keep off attackers, which Gerald Portal had warned about earlier in a private letter to his wife.

When Portal passed Machakos in 1893, the inhabitants of Machakos were described as diligent agriculturalists famous for their tracking abilities, whose poisoned arrows had ready market as far away as Ethiopia (Abyssinia).