Did you know Odieros could not say ‘Kusumo’?

Kisumu was one of the last towns created when the Uganda railway reached those shores in 1901.

The name was fleshed from ‘Sumo,’ which literally means ‘place of barter trade,’ since people going there often said ‘Adhi Kisuma,’ or ‘I am going to trade.’ Hence, it became known as ‘Kisumo,’ Luo for a trading post.

But odieros mispronounced it as Kisumu, which stuck to date. They also named it Port Florence after the wife of George Whitehouse, the chief railway engineer (who had built railways in England, South Africa, India and South America).

Never mind, it was Florence Preston, wife of railway foreman Ronald Preston, who drove the last nail on the sleeper of the railway!
But the name was only used for a year and by the time Sir Winston Churchill came visiting in 1907, it had reverted to Kisumu.

The railway was built for many reasons: to open up the interior for British imperialists and make movement from Mombasa easier. It also made it easier to administer Uganda as a colony, but did you know the most important reason was safeguarding the waters of Lake Victoria?

Lake Victoria, being the source of River Nile, was of strategic interest to the British who also colonised Egypt, a country whose lifeline in terms of food, was the Nile.

With the Nile taken care of, Britain could use the Suez Canal from Egypt and transport personnel and goods from England to India, another of its colonies.
In fact, Britain had a 44 per cent stake in Suez Canal, which it bought from indebted Egypt for £4 million (Sh520 million) in 1875.

Agriculturally-dependent Egypt also has historical rights to River Nile, which was the basis of its civilisation as the Nile Waters Agreements of 1891 and 1929 attest.

Did you know that of the three East African countries, Kenya owns the least share of the lake? Tanzania owns 52 per cent, Uganda 42 percent and Kenya... six per cent!

This ownership was signed by Britain on behalf of its colonies with the Agreement of 1929 granting Egypt, not only a lion’s share of the Nile waters, but also giving Cairo rights to inspect it through 10 countries!

The Agreement also forbade any major project around Lake Victoria that can threaten the right volumes from reaching Egypt.

Did you know that Uganda’s border stretched all the way to Naivasha as at 1902, but the British Foreign Office shifted borders to Lake Victoria to have the railway  in one country- Kenya?