Peasants build castles in the air for over 100 years

A section of land owners from Kihiu Mwiri Farmers Company protest outside the Ministry of Lands offices.

The dual carriage gently meanders past Thika, before unceremoniously forking out like the tongue of a gigantic serpent. One prong heads to Saba Saba and the other to Makuyu, before labouring towards the Kambiti hills where ‘invisible powers’ watch over motorists with itchy fingers from appropriating the bags of charcoal left unattended by the roadside.

The road is fabled to have inspired one of Kenya’s greatest writers, Ngugi wa Thiong’o to pen his unforgettable novel, The River Between which immortalised the two opposing ridges of Makuyu and Kameno, dissected by Honia River. The book aptly captured the dilemma confronting a colonised people’s struggles to adapt to the white man’s religion.