Slave trader’s word earned Kenya its name

Keywords; By Amos Kareithi

As the wind blows lazily, donkeys ferrying water up Kalundu River echo all around the valley and beyond.

The sun is crystal clear and the blue sky allows a peak into the distant horizon.

The blue dome shape, specked with white resembles the head of a giant ostrich visible hundreds of miles away.

It must have been from such a height at what was then known as Kituai, that chief Kivoi wa Mwenda, the cunning slave trader, stood when he responded to a question by Ludwig Krapf and famously quipped in his mother tongue kiima ki nyaa (a mountain with ostrich).

Land of contrasts

And thus, Kenya got its name from the confusion of tongues as Krapf recorded in his diaries that he had seen Mt Kenia, snow peaked mountain in the tropics.

Kituai was also simplified to Kitui, which represents a land of contrasts and mythical powers.

Kivoi, the slave and ivory trader is long gone but Kitui bears some enduring footprints of the traumatic days when residents of Ukambani and beyond were hunted like wild animals, sold to a life of servitude to Arab traders, who shipped the strongest to Europe and America.

The lodges where the heavily armed raiders and traders refreshed have long succumbed to the sands of time. But five gigantic Msufi trees at the current Kitui Police Divisional headquarters belong to that epoch.

It is the Swahili town, which acts as the repository of history, although it was a creation long after slave trade.

Inside plot number 51, Abadalla Ali, 67, recounts how his grandfather, Said Salim, trekked from Mombasa to Kitui in 1895.

According to Ali, his family originated from Oman and only came to Mombasa to fight the Portuguese occupying Fort Jesus in 1696.

He tells his family’s history, entwined with that of the Kenyan coastline while seated crossed-legged in one of Kitui’s oldest houses, believed to be 120 years old.

The four-room house, made of burnt red bricks, still bears the original iron sheets, although they are now of indeterminate colour owing to rust. The trusses were shipped from India.

Old slave trade route

From one of the rooms, Hassina Jaffer, 80, who is too frail to venture out of bed, explains that had her descendants not come to rescue Kenya from the Portuguese, the country would have had a different history.

Juma Bakari, a former chief and councillor recalls how his grandfather, Juma, who was barely 20, travelled from the Coast following the old slave trade route and arrived in Kitui in 1895.

"He was carrying beads, bungles, Mangungu (white clothes) and Kaniki (black clothes) during the one-month journey through a hostile terrain," Bakari says.

Many were the nights Bakari’s grandfather would regale his descendants with tales of how traders unwittingly fell prey to the paws of the dreaded ngaku (small type of lion).

"The ngaku was cunning and dreaded. Once it invaded a camp, it just targeted people. It did not touch livestock. That is why it was so feared," Bakari adds.

The long distant trade routes, which transformed Kitui into a ‘dry port’, have since been replaced by a second corridor where tarmac and rail are now used instead of the cattle trucks.

Some of the resting places used during the long distant trade are still in use and still retain some peculiarities as they have old shops long established by Arabs or Indians, but now operated by residents.

Kitui was thousands of miles from the theatre of the First World War in 1914, but its spear-wielding warriors made a lasting impression on Her Majesty’s empire.

Outside Kitui DC’s office, a 1918 plaque stands in honour of Kambas, who were conscripted into the ‘German War’.

One elder, Denis Katia, says about 200 Kamba soldiers were recruited into the King’s African Rifles, as evidenced by the head of the spear (Kilunda) drawn on the plaque.

The other town, with a rich history, Mutomo, is accessible from Kitui, through a dirt road.

Ringed by rocky hills, Mutomo hosts 18,000 people, majority being traders and transporters. Although it retains thick vegetation, creating a picture of a place where nature is in perfect harmony, only small ruminants are still domiciled here.

Mutomo’s fortunes

"This town owes its existence to the meno ya ndovu (elephant tusk). During the long distant trade days, it was a good resting place for Mombasa-bound travellers," says Solomon Mutunga, 87.

He says after the coming of the colonialists, Mutomo’s fortunes dwindled with the disappearance of traders, who flocked the area to barter cattle for clothes, beads and tobacco.

But in the 1980s, Mutomo got a new lease of life as poachers infiltrated the area and hunted down elephants and rhinos for tusks and horns.

"Now all the animals are gone. We used poisoned arrows, which had the potency to disable and kill a mature bull elephant in two hours," Mutunga says.

He recalls how Mutomo would host Asians, Arabs and Kenyans looking for leopard skins, rhino horns and ivory.

Though poaching has since been banned, Mutomo’s stream has declined, but it has not dried out, making it one of the most expensive rural urban centres.

Mutomo’s dwindled economic activities are a pale shadow of the brisk business of the 1980s, as locals were recruited as porters, while others supplied arrow poison.

Now, the surrounding rocky hills are bare, the pastures dry not from nibbling by wildlife but from lack of rain and the occasional sand storms, which strip the earth bare.

"This town does not go to sleep. The small-scale traders operate all day and night. It is very easy to connect to Mombasa from here.

Ikutha trading centre was once a favourite resting place for the trade caravans. They sheltered at the confluence of two local rivers, Twa and Mvuko, now looking defaced.

The sleepy town without an inch of tarmac is located 35km from Ngomano, the plains where the slaves rested.

Unlike Mutomo, the glamour of ivory and slave trade has no lasting impression and the centre is hoping for a rebirth.

The shacks established by enterprising Indians and Arabs have succumbed to the constant gnawing by termites but the overworked beast of burden is still the most reliable mode of transport, although the emergence of motorbikes as taxis has somehow opened the area.