It’s no Lunatic Express but SGR will open up a new historical epoch

Standard Gauge Railway. (Photo: Edward Kiplomo/Standard)

In his 1971 book The Lunatic Express: An Entertainment in Imperialism, Charles Miller pondered over the Uganda Railway and the pitfalls that befell its construction. Some challenges were policy based with some legislators in Britain doubting whether the undertaking was really worth it.

Others had a lot to do with conflicts of worldviews giving rise to, mythical inferences of Africa seers and prophets whose incantations had predicted the coming of a metallic serpent.

Yet real adversities were visited upon the so-called coolies—who built the premier railway line in Kenya—by mosquitoes and wild animals, the most dreaded of them being the man-eaters of Tsavo. The Uganda Railway was of course also the Kenya-Uganda Railway, with 660 miles of it actually lying in Kenya. This was an imperial strategic endeavour meant to protect British interests in Uganda from the Germans. The building of the railway started in 1896 at the Port of Mombasa.

In 1898, the construction was completed at Port Florence, today’s Port of Kisumu. The Uganda Railway railhead reached Lake Victoria, a distance of 930km (578km) from Mombasa, on December 19, 1901, at Fort Florence, named after Florence Whitehouse, wife of George Whitehouse, chief engineer of the Uganda Railway.

Given the unfriendly terrain and myriad vagaries the construction workers were up against most—if not all—the time and against the wish of policy makers in England the completion of the Mombasa-Kisumu section was a momentous achievement.

Yes, the story of modern Kenya began with the Kenya-Uganda Railway, a feat of late 19th Century and early 19th Century engineering. Starting at Mombasa, the railway traversed the deep interiors of Kenya and Uganda. More than a century has passed and Kenya has changed dramatically over time. The world, too, has changed — Britain’s empire is long gone and the rise of China has been a historical phenomenon and is still unfolding.

The Standard Gauge Railway (SGR)   is a joint project of the Chinese and Kenyan governments and its construction has involved no fatalities caused either by man, beast or technology. When the Uganda Railway got to Nairobi (aka Mile 326) in 1899, the future capital city was little more than a swamp. The railway depot built later that year became the extremely humble beginnings of the city of the future. Railway housing and offices became among the first constructions in Nairobi.

Some 118 years later, the SGR is Kenya’s biggest infrastructure project and from concept to implementation, and as a Vision 2030 flagship project, it was premised on transforming public transport, lives and the economy. The SGR’s Nairobi station is a world away from those humble beginnings and is located in one of Africa’s cosmopolitan, enterprising and technologically innovative cities.

The SGR is the beginning of very big things indeed in Kenya and Uganda and farther afield. The Kenya of 2017 is a vibrant modern multiparty democracy guided by the 2010 Constitution. The Kenyans of the present are a sovereign increasingly well-educated people abundantly aware of their rights.

The Kenyans of Kenya Colony barely had any rights, not even to property and land ownership. The construction of the SGR has involved public awareness and participation at every turn, beginning with compensation to landowners for land taken up by the railway line.

Highly informative

Neera Kapila, an expert on Kenyan railway history, is author of the highly informative Race, Rail & Society: Roots of Modern Kenya and has long been of the view that understanding East Africa’s past entails understanding the origins of the railways that traverse the region.

The SGR will undoubtedly open up a new historical epoch in Kenya and the rest of the region and is a project like none other within our borders. The old railway line’s stations between Mombasa and Nairobi have been upgraded for the 21st Century and are architectural and functional wonders.

The SGR will be a boon to locals all along its course. Indeed, Kenyans have already benefited throughout the period the SGR construction has been going on and they will continue to benefit as long as the railway exists. And county-based journalists will be the key storytellers in multimedia news houses of the history-in-the-making of the SGR saga.

-The writer is an International Relations scholar at the University of Nairobi