A story this week claimed that a once-lost map of the Nanyuki railway line had been found. Sorry folks, that was a lie. Dear history buffs, whoever is spinning such fairy tales around Nanyuki town should first read M. F. Hill’s book, The Permanent Way, which details the early history of railways in Kenya and details why various railheads terminated where they did. Each branch line, as you will find out, had its own unique story.
Again, which infrastructure project could only have a single map, and how comes the British press, with all its tabloid manners, failed to highlight such a juicy story? Even the Mombasa-Uganda line was for many years terminating in Tororo and it was only in 1926 when an extension began.
Initially, the railway extension from Thika to Nyeri had ended at Naro Moru in early 1920s, at a time when the colonial government was under pressure to build a new administrative centre in Nanyuki as the headquarters of the Northern Frontier District.
By this time, Nanyuki was emerging as the base for the 3rd King’s African Rifles (KAR) battalion which was training around Mt Kenya. Thus, the town was to join other railhead towns that were emerging along branch lines: Nakuru to Kisumu, Gilgil to Nyahururu (1929), Eldoret to Kitale (1926), Konza to Magadi (1915), Kisumu to Butere (1932), and Voi to Taveta (1914).
Interestingly, all these branch lines were to use some of the material that had remained in the stores after the construction of the Permanent Way — the name they had given the Kenya-Uganda Railway.
If you look at the British parliamentary Hansard report and the Kenya Gazette of August 1926 you will find a government notice No 565 in which the Colonial Secretary in Kenya, Sir Henry Monck-Mason Moore — he later became Governor in 1939 — authorises the extension of the Nairobi line from Naro Moru to Nanyuki. The Thika to Naro Moru line had been completed in 1927.
In 1928, the Colonial Secretary for Kenya addressed the Legislative Council and said that the government had set aside “a sum of £5,000 representing this government’s guarantee on the construction of the extension of the Railway from Naro Moru to Nanyuki.”
The final total cost for that extension was £54,780 and the Naro Moru to Nanyuki line was opened in 1931 with a lot of fanfare and military parade. It had now joined the old branch lines in Kenya which included the Voi-Taveta link with Tanzania, which was built between 1914 and 1918 to transport soldiers and equipment during the First World War and to later serve the sisal farmers in Taita Taveta. The other was a rail branch to Lake Magadi which was completed in 1915 to exploit the soda ash mined by Magadi Soda Company, then underwritten by private capital in Britain.
But Nanyuki, before the railway, was turning into a lawless jungle; perhaps the epicentre of notoriety in colonial Kenya.
Fancy this: Eighteen years earlier, in 1911, the entire Nanyuki had been emptied of all locals after the controversial forced relocation of Maasai that led to the resignation of the racist Governor, Percy Girouard, who had arrived in Kenya from South Africa. He had apparently promised white settlers land in Laikipia after claiming that he had signed a “Maasai Treaty” with Laibon Lenana to move Laikipia Maasai to the Southern Reserve. But it turned out that he had misled the Colonial Secretary in London.
With the removal of the Maasai, millions of acres were left with virtually nobody. Nanyuki was turned into a lawless jungle and there was a case that captured the British Press attention in 1911 when one of the most prominent arrivals, Galbraith Cole, murdered a man he suspected of stealing his sheep. In Court, Cole admitted shooting the man and failing to report the matter to the police. But the jury of white settlers set him free and found him “not guilty.”
When Governor Girouard reported the matter to London, he justified the killing, saying that “the crime is due to prevalence of unrestrained stock theft.” When the matter reached the East African Department at the Colonial Office in London, they dismissed Governor Girouard’s “apologetics” over his refusal to appeal.
“It seems to me that murder is murder, and that it is out of question to let the matter slide in the easy manner which he appears to contemplate,” wrote H J Read on April 26, 1911. He also termed it as a “callous and totally unjustifiable murder... a gross miscarriage of justice. Cole must be deported.”
But in a strange twist, the governor called the High Court judges who were handling the case and told them that a person who had been acquitted in a criminal case could not be deported unless the case is political. They then leaked the demands of a deportation to the British press in a bid to embarrass the Colonial Office in London.
Long story short, Cole did not see the railway reach Nanyuki. He died in 1929 in a mysterious way.
Here is the story: Cole had married Eleanor Balfour, a niece of former Conservative Prime Minister, Arthur Balfour, and then settled near Nanyuki. But after 12 years of marriage, his health started to decline due to arthritis and was turning blind in one eye. After his wife flew him to England, Cole complained that he felt like a prisoner and demanded to return to Nanyuki to “die where he could hear a zebra bark.”
One morning in October 1929 after Eleanor went for a bush walk, Cole shot himself with the assistance of his long-time worker Jama. It was a suicidal surprise by Nanyuki standards. While famous writer Karen Blixen mourned him as the “last inheritor of aristocratic imperialism”, there were many rumours about his demise.
That was the kind of environment in which Nanyuki town was about to grow. By this time the rail head had terminated in Naro Moru and there were fears that it could outsmart Nanyuki, which was being described as “the youngest settlement in the whole of Kenya (and) one of the most enterprising and progressive.” If Nanyuki was to be a military and administrative town, then the need for a railway terminating there became urgent.
In 1927, a motion was taken to the Legislative Council by Edward N Kenealy, who represented Nanyuki, asking the government carry out an economic survey “of the country north of Nanyuki River and extend the Nyeri railway to Nanyuki.”
His reasons were that since Nanyuki had become both a civil and military administration town for the Northern Frontier District, it required the line for “the movement of personnel and stores.”
“A great saving could be effected if, instead of the of the KAR Supply and Transport Depot being in Nairobi, it could be moved to Nanyuki and I think that the saving in the KAR vote would in a year pay the cost of the railway extension. The position at the moment is this;if Naro Moru, the present terminus of the railway, is maintained, it would mean that Nanyuki, a township which government started, would suffer, and that an opposition township would be established 15 miles away, which, from every point of view, would be extremely disadvantageous.”
The matter of the Nanyuki line had been discussed at the Railway Branch Lines Committee of the Legco and they had all agreed that since Nanyuki was a government town, the railway should terminate there.
In those days, the general manager of the Kenya Uganda Railway was an automatic member of the Legco and he agreed that the line should be extended to Nanyuki, but was only opposed to the use of the word “immediately” and favoured “in future”. He later dropped his request and the Motion for extending Nanyuki line was passed on September 16, 1927.
Thus, the question of a Nanyuki railway map having disappeared does not arise since the railway terminated where it was supposed to end in order to save the government town from being eclipsed by Naro Moru 27 kilometres away. Even after independence, the Kenyatta government said it had no plans to extend the Nanyuki line, opting to build a road to Meru. If a map dated 1968 exists, then it was not “the lost map” — for no map disappeared.
