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] |
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).
Grand post
The fame of the Wakambas was spread beyond their traditional boundaries by The Times of London correspondent, Ernest Gedge, who sojourned there in August 1893, accompanied by 60 men among them Nubians who had run out of food. At the time Gedge was doubling up as a correspondent as well as deputising Fredrick Jackson who was leading the expedition to Uganda. He would later propose that he be granted 500 square miles of land to plant opium.
According to Francis Hall, who encountered the controversial journalist, Machakos was quite uneventful at the time and could be relied upon to provide food supplies for starving travellers. Machakos also witnessed some colourful pioneering whites like Mary Walsh, whose husband John Walsh regularly traded goats in Kikuyu, Kibwezi and Machakos. Mary was like a long distant hawker who ran dairies, open bars and operated a transport business although she was dreaded by the Wakambas, as Paul Sulivan explains in his book Kikuyu District, for her quick use of her rhino hide whip. When drunk, Mary amused spectators by riding her mule backwards, sometimes brandishing her pearl studded pistol that was normally concealed in her skirts.
When Francis Hall visited Machakos for the first time on October 10, 1892 from Mombasa, he recorded his impression of the town in a letter to his father, Edward Hall thus: "This place Machakos is a grand post situated right up on the mountains. The fort is built square and has a six-foot ditch guarded with barbed wire all around. Inside the four sides are houses and stores all around and the centre is readily laid with flowers and a flag staff." At this time the fort was guarded by 50 men who doubled as police, dispatch runners and porters. It was also their duty to purchase food from the natives and store it for any passing caravans.
The hostility between the Akambas and the whites is further attested by the literature etched at the entrance of what used to be the entrance of the fort that no longer exists. The two short pillars mark the gateway that once served as the entrance of this pioneer bastion of British administration and immortalises the hostility between the locals and the intruders. "These pillars mark the gateway of the old fort of Machakos established by Fredrick Jackson of IBEA in 1889, enlarged and strengthened by Captain FD Lugard in 1890. It was the first post founded by the company in the interior of East Africa and from it John Ainsworth established law and order over Ukambani. It was demolished in 1921," says Hall.
White man chased
Reliving the days of the coming of the white man, Danson Mutuku recounts how some whites tried to establish a farm in Katoloni, at the bottom of Kiima Kimwe in 1890. "My grandfather, Kiminye wa Mati was a very fierce warrior. When the white man’s wishes were translated to him and his peers, they rejected it and chased the visitors away," adds Mwema. Six years later, Ainsworth too faced similar wrath from the locals when he was attacked and kicked out of Machakos.
Ironically, when Waiyaki wa Hinga flattened Fort Smith in 1892, the besieged whites fled to Machakos Fort, led by Kinyanjui wa Gathirimu. Machakos’ golden era ended in 1899 when Ainsworth was transferred to Nairobi, which was at the time enjoying the status of a capital city, while older stations like Kikuyu were downgraded. When Hall moved from Kikuyu to take over in Machakos, he complained in a letter dated November 26, 1899, that the company headquarters are now in Nairobi, a mere 8 miles from Kikuyu. As early as 1892, there had been speculation among company employees that the broke IBEA was contemplating closing down some of the stations such as Kikuyu and Tsavo, although Machakos at the time was not targeted.
It’s fate was sealed permanently in 1901 when Ainsworth disagreed with the engineers constructing the Uganda railway that saw the town by-passed by the line, which passed 16 kilometres away. The town was, however, belatedly declared a township in 1904, but it took another half century for the colonial authorities to upgrade it to an urban council before it was elevated into a town council in 1974 and ultimately transformed into a municipality in 1980.
Despite the rough treatment the town and its people have received from the colonialists, Machakos, like the Kiinga rescued from the collapsed colonial building, has weathered the storm, diligently feeding and accommodating some of Nairobi’s residents.
akareithi@standardmedia.co.ke
