QuadroK4000
Elder Lister
@Meria hizi Ashock Leyland ndizo zinapewa trips za red soil na mchinku. Zinakimbia kuliko Howo na Shacman.
Eicher na Tata ndio naona matatizo kidogo.
On this day 126yrs ago
- Thread starter Meria
- Start date
Eicher na Tata ndio naona matatizo kidogo.
QuadroK4000
Elder Lister
Imenikumbusha scene ya Nyairoffi half life.
Budspencer
Elder Lister
Should have been part of the Star Trek and the Next Generation cast.
THE NAIROBI INCIDENT(RUDE EWART GROGON)
Where Imenti House stands today, bounded by Kenyatta and Moi Avenues, and Tom Mboya and Cabral Streets, once stood the courthouses of the Protectorate. It is outside that building, on a cold March 15th morning in 1907 that the following events take place.
The man called Captain Ewart Grogan etched his name into the history of Nairobi, and by extension, Kenya, in the first decade of the 20th Century. Remembered as the hopeless romantic who left his career choice to the mercy of a coin toss, Grogan made the arduous, ill-advised Cape to Cairo trip to win over the stepfather of the woman he loved. So for Gertrude’s (in who’s honor he built Gertrude Children’s Hospital), Grogan embarked on a two-year odyssey. While traveling through Malawi, at a small village stop called Chiromo, which means the joining of the streams, he lost some of his luggage. He would later move to Nairobi, to a point on the west side where two rivers met and christen it Chiromo.
Grogan was the 14th child of William Grogan, the Irish Surveyor General of the Duchy of Lancasters 21 children. After the coin toss landed on his seeking a life of adventure, Grogan first landed in Southern Africa at the sunset of the 19th Century and made a name for himself as an able military man. Misfortune then followed.
One night, a drunken Grogan got into a bar fight with a Portuguese officer in Beira, Mozambique. The bar brawl ended in the death of the Portuguese man. Grogan was quickly and quietly shipped off to Zanzibar, where he made his way inland, into what is now Kenya. Ever the entrepreneur, Grogan set out to tame the wild around Nairobi. Nairobi was just a small shanty town then, and the settler thought the best thing for the city was to move towards Chiromo.
Grogan also became the President of the Colonists Association, and an ardent defender of the settler community. The settler community wanted more leeway to do whatever it wanted in the protectorate, while the British government struggled to instill law and order.
One night, in March 1907, Grogan’s sister and her friend got home from the Nairobi Club with what would present itself as the perfect opportunity to stick it to the colonial government.?Grogan’s sister, Mrs. Hunter, and her friend Miss McDonnel had been riding in a rickshaw (then called a gharri) pulled by three Gikuyu men. It is unclear what exactly happened, but Mrs. Hunter would later report to Grogan that the servants had given the ladies a rather bumpy ride and been rude about it. The man the Kikuyu had nicknamed Bwana Chui, saw a chance to earn political mileage. With the support of a friend called SC Fichat, Grogan hatched a rather sadistic plan. He would flog the three servants in public.
The servants, ignorant of what kind of brutality was in the offing, made their way to work as usual the next morning. Grogan caught them and tied their hands behind their back before locking them in a shed. He then got a few other of his servants and set out down Government Road, what is now known as Moi Avenue.?From as early as 8 am, his friend Fichat had been walking through the small town, spreading the word that Grogan was about to flog three servants for disrespecting white women. Scores of settlers flocked the streets, all headed down towards the town magistrates courtyard. Outside, they surrounded Grogan and the three men who now sat on the soggy ground, frightened. It was 9:55am, and hell was just about to break lose.
Grogan stood in the middle of the circle, with the three Kikuyu men at his feet. First, he made an impassioned speech, skirting the supposed crime that had triggered his outrage. He spoke of supposed lethargy of the government in protecting the colonists, and how they needed to take back control.
Logan, the town magistrate, was attracted outside by the commotion. Standing at the door to the court, he identified Grogan as the leader and addressed him. He asked him what he intended to do.
I am going to beat these boys.
What for?
Because I want to.
But what for?
Because they insulted my sister and another lady. I want no interference; there is no indecency in this.
This isn’t right procedure, Captain Grogan. You should instead take them before proper authorities and lay a charge.
I am tired of being made a fool of and this matter I dare not trust to the authorities.
Seeing it would be impossible to convince Grogan, Logan turned to the crowd. He pleaded with them to follow the law. His impassioned plea only triggered a call for him to leave. There is no proof such a case had ever been reported and ignored, so it is more likely the first part of Grogan’s answer was the truth. He was doing it because he wanted to.
By that time, a cop called George Smith had made it from the police station to the scene. He made his way to the center of the circle and placed a hand on Grogan. Almost on cue, the crowd separated the two and slowly nudged Smith out of the circle. After Smith had been pushed out, Grogan turned to the crowd again. He spoke to them, thrice, appealing for non-interference.
“Will you promise me that when I have done with these natives you will not touch or do anything to them?”
With the crowd in agreement, he asked for a translator. A man called Mr. Cowlie stepped forward. Through him, Grogan told the three frightened and subdued men why he was going to flog them. What he said exactly was never recorded but it is likely he alluded to the offence without being clear about the severity. He capped it with a loaded message that white men would not stand any impertinence to their women-folk.
Grogan then turned to one of the men and flogged him. He told the court later that he had whipped the man 25 times before someone else, presumably Russell Bowker, grabbed the kiboko and began beating the second man. Gray then followed Bowker and thrashed the third wailing man. As the three men lay on the ground writhing in pain, the crowd of majorly white men cheered in the background. Once the flogging was done, the crowd quickly dispersed, leaving Grogan to send the three men home. Two could still walk, but one was badly hurt.?He was hospitalized, presumably at the Native Hospital (now Kenyatta Hospital) for a considerable period. Some historical accounts suggest the badly hurt man later died.
Upon their arrest, however, Grogan, Fichat, Bowker, Gray, and Low were charged with illegal assembly and not murder or even the more obvious crime of assault. The colonial government, aware of the social politics, had to charge them with something. It also initially wanted to move the trial to Mombasa. The selection of the courtyard of the Nairobi court had been a deliberate attempt to show the settlers did not recognize established authority. To restore the authority of the court, it was crucial to hold the trials in the very rooms the men had disrespected.
The case Crown versus Grogan, Bowker, Burn, Low, Fichat, Gray, Bennett and Walter Dun (1907) centered around the events that had led to the illegal gathering. The men in the dock were unapologetic about their actions. Bowker told the court that “As it has always been the first principle with me to flog a nigger on sight who insults a white woman I felt it my bounded duty to take the step I did and that in a public place as a warning to the natives.” Grogan reaffirmed his defiance while Fichat claimed a Kenyan had insulted a female member of his family four months prior.
For the unnamed servants, their supposed crime was that they had insulted white women. In early colonial Kenya, this charge elicited fears of the Black Peril, a rampant fear of black men having sexual relations with white women. Many people in the crowd, working with very little detail, wrongly believed that they had either raped or tried to rape the women.?
There is little consensus on exactly what happened. One account, forwarded by Grogan’s nephew, suggests that the three rickshaw drivers had been drinking. They had raced the rickshaw and toyed with their passengers, apparently playing with it like a seesaw and laughing at their freaked out passengers. Another suggests that the passengers had leaned back in the rickshaw during an uphill climb, making the load heavier for the drivers. Displeased, they had stopped the rickshaw and asked their passengers to lean forward but due to a break in communication, the ladies didn’t. The resulting seesaw was the result of that.
Whatever the offense had been, it seemed Grogan and the settler community milked it to show their defiance of the colonial government. It was the first decade of settlement, and the government already had a hard time keeping the settlers in check. Grogan was jailed for one month and fined Rs. 500. Bowker and Gray were detained for 14 days and fined Rs. 250 while Fichat was only jailed for 14 days. Low, a newspaper man and the editor of The Star, was jailed for seven days. The sentences were for illegal assembly; the assault charge never came up. Where to jail the men then became a bone of contention. Two years before, a murder case against a newcomer had triggered outrage after he was held in a Mombasa jail for a whole year. The colonial government bargained with the settlers and agreed to have Grogan and his compatriots jailed at a building on Nairobi Hill, presumably Grogan’s Chiromo House.
***
In the previous murder case, a newly arrived immigrant called Max Wehner shot and killed a man he had hired as a guide to his hotel in Nakuru. When the body of the unnamed guide was found the next morning, he had two bullet wounds and his head was battered in.?Investigations showed Wehner had been jailed for murder in South America and had served time in South Africa for various crimes. The serial offender demanded a trial by jury for the murder case. The jury of five white men returned a verdict that he had indeed killed the Kenyan man but could not be held responsible because he was drunk at the time. The exact wording of their finding would later become a key point in the appeals. Chief Justice Hamilton, presiding over the trial, sentenced Wehner to death and his friend to a term of penal servitude. He must have known that his judgment would trigger a furor among the settlers.
Any case against a white man, especially where the supposed offence was against a black Kenyan, triggered unity among the settler community. Wehner was new in Kenya, and had hardly had time to make any friends. The case against him though, and the death sentence, won him many friends. Settlers then met in Nairobi to find loopholes in the case, including the fact that the first African witness had not been sworn in, and that the jury was sworn in after the first two Kenyan witnesses had given their testimony. The case went before the Court of Appeal in Zanzibar where the death sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life.
Undeterred, the settlers set up a defense fund to appeal to the Privy Council. The African Standard, the leading Kenyan newspaper at the time, joined in the campaign to raise a defense fund. In early 1906, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council overturned the convictions based on serious procedural errors. The two men were released and sent on their way to India.
There were two other cases before Grogan’s that brought the relationship between the settlers and the government to new lows. One was a case against two men called McCormick and McLeish in 1905 for shooting black Kenyans, killing elephants, and kidnapping Kenyan girls. In July the same year, a white farmer was tried for shooting and wounding a Kenyan. He claimed they had been creating a disturbance near his house while his wife was giving birth. What irked the settlers more was not the resulting six months imprisonment but the fact that he had been handcuffed and escorted to Nairobi by a black Kenyan policeman.
After Wehner, the next time a white settler would be convicted of causing harm to a Kenyan was in 1920. A brutal farmer called Hawkins had flogged several of his workers, including a pregnant woman. One of the victims died as a result of the injuries and Hawkins was jailed for only two years. It would be another four decades before the trapdoor opened for a white man, Peter Poole, and the noose tightened around his neck for killing a man called Kamawe Musungi. Grogan and his comrades got away with assault, as did many other settlers whose parternalistic attitudes towards Kenyans was shown in their brutality. Flogging was integrated into the penal code, primarily as a method of punishment for black Kenyans.
For a Full Transcript of ‘The Flogging of Natives, see this archive.
Featured Image from Nigel Pavitt’s 2008 book ‘Kenya: A Country in the Making 1880-1940.’ Image shows Government Road (now Moi Avenue) in the early 1900s.
Where Imenti House stands today, bounded by Kenyatta and Moi Avenues, and Tom Mboya and Cabral Streets, once stood the courthouses of the Protectorate. It is outside that building, on a cold March 15th morning in 1907 that the following events take place.
The man called Captain Ewart Grogan etched his name into the history of Nairobi, and by extension, Kenya, in the first decade of the 20th Century. Remembered as the hopeless romantic who left his career choice to the mercy of a coin toss, Grogan made the arduous, ill-advised Cape to Cairo trip to win over the stepfather of the woman he loved. So for Gertrude’s (in who’s honor he built Gertrude Children’s Hospital), Grogan embarked on a two-year odyssey. While traveling through Malawi, at a small village stop called Chiromo, which means the joining of the streams, he lost some of his luggage. He would later move to Nairobi, to a point on the west side where two rivers met and christen it Chiromo.
Grogan was the 14th child of William Grogan, the Irish Surveyor General of the Duchy of Lancasters 21 children. After the coin toss landed on his seeking a life of adventure, Grogan first landed in Southern Africa at the sunset of the 19th Century and made a name for himself as an able military man. Misfortune then followed.
One night, a drunken Grogan got into a bar fight with a Portuguese officer in Beira, Mozambique. The bar brawl ended in the death of the Portuguese man. Grogan was quickly and quietly shipped off to Zanzibar, where he made his way inland, into what is now Kenya. Ever the entrepreneur, Grogan set out to tame the wild around Nairobi. Nairobi was just a small shanty town then, and the settler thought the best thing for the city was to move towards Chiromo.
Grogan also became the President of the Colonists Association, and an ardent defender of the settler community. The settler community wanted more leeway to do whatever it wanted in the protectorate, while the British government struggled to instill law and order.
One night, in March 1907, Grogan’s sister and her friend got home from the Nairobi Club with what would present itself as the perfect opportunity to stick it to the colonial government.?Grogan’s sister, Mrs. Hunter, and her friend Miss McDonnel had been riding in a rickshaw (then called a gharri) pulled by three Gikuyu men. It is unclear what exactly happened, but Mrs. Hunter would later report to Grogan that the servants had given the ladies a rather bumpy ride and been rude about it. The man the Kikuyu had nicknamed Bwana Chui, saw a chance to earn political mileage. With the support of a friend called SC Fichat, Grogan hatched a rather sadistic plan. He would flog the three servants in public.
The servants, ignorant of what kind of brutality was in the offing, made their way to work as usual the next morning. Grogan caught them and tied their hands behind their back before locking them in a shed. He then got a few other of his servants and set out down Government Road, what is now known as Moi Avenue.?From as early as 8 am, his friend Fichat had been walking through the small town, spreading the word that Grogan was about to flog three servants for disrespecting white women. Scores of settlers flocked the streets, all headed down towards the town magistrates courtyard. Outside, they surrounded Grogan and the three men who now sat on the soggy ground, frightened. It was 9:55am, and hell was just about to break lose.
Grogan stood in the middle of the circle, with the three Kikuyu men at his feet. First, he made an impassioned speech, skirting the supposed crime that had triggered his outrage. He spoke of supposed lethargy of the government in protecting the colonists, and how they needed to take back control.
Logan, the town magistrate, was attracted outside by the commotion. Standing at the door to the court, he identified Grogan as the leader and addressed him. He asked him what he intended to do.
I am going to beat these boys.
What for?
Because I want to.
But what for?
Because they insulted my sister and another lady. I want no interference; there is no indecency in this.
This isn’t right procedure, Captain Grogan. You should instead take them before proper authorities and lay a charge.
I am tired of being made a fool of and this matter I dare not trust to the authorities.
Seeing it would be impossible to convince Grogan, Logan turned to the crowd. He pleaded with them to follow the law. His impassioned plea only triggered a call for him to leave. There is no proof such a case had ever been reported and ignored, so it is more likely the first part of Grogan’s answer was the truth. He was doing it because he wanted to.
By that time, a cop called George Smith had made it from the police station to the scene. He made his way to the center of the circle and placed a hand on Grogan. Almost on cue, the crowd separated the two and slowly nudged Smith out of the circle. After Smith had been pushed out, Grogan turned to the crowd again. He spoke to them, thrice, appealing for non-interference.
“Will you promise me that when I have done with these natives you will not touch or do anything to them?”
With the crowd in agreement, he asked for a translator. A man called Mr. Cowlie stepped forward. Through him, Grogan told the three frightened and subdued men why he was going to flog them. What he said exactly was never recorded but it is likely he alluded to the offence without being clear about the severity. He capped it with a loaded message that white men would not stand any impertinence to their women-folk.
Grogan then turned to one of the men and flogged him. He told the court later that he had whipped the man 25 times before someone else, presumably Russell Bowker, grabbed the kiboko and began beating the second man. Gray then followed Bowker and thrashed the third wailing man. As the three men lay on the ground writhing in pain, the crowd of majorly white men cheered in the background. Once the flogging was done, the crowd quickly dispersed, leaving Grogan to send the three men home. Two could still walk, but one was badly hurt.?He was hospitalized, presumably at the Native Hospital (now Kenyatta Hospital) for a considerable period. Some historical accounts suggest the badly hurt man later died.
Upon their arrest, however, Grogan, Fichat, Bowker, Gray, and Low were charged with illegal assembly and not murder or even the more obvious crime of assault. The colonial government, aware of the social politics, had to charge them with something. It also initially wanted to move the trial to Mombasa. The selection of the courtyard of the Nairobi court had been a deliberate attempt to show the settlers did not recognize established authority. To restore the authority of the court, it was crucial to hold the trials in the very rooms the men had disrespected.
The case Crown versus Grogan, Bowker, Burn, Low, Fichat, Gray, Bennett and Walter Dun (1907) centered around the events that had led to the illegal gathering. The men in the dock were unapologetic about their actions. Bowker told the court that “As it has always been the first principle with me to flog a nigger on sight who insults a white woman I felt it my bounded duty to take the step I did and that in a public place as a warning to the natives.” Grogan reaffirmed his defiance while Fichat claimed a Kenyan had insulted a female member of his family four months prior.
For the unnamed servants, their supposed crime was that they had insulted white women. In early colonial Kenya, this charge elicited fears of the Black Peril, a rampant fear of black men having sexual relations with white women. Many people in the crowd, working with very little detail, wrongly believed that they had either raped or tried to rape the women.?
There is little consensus on exactly what happened. One account, forwarded by Grogan’s nephew, suggests that the three rickshaw drivers had been drinking. They had raced the rickshaw and toyed with their passengers, apparently playing with it like a seesaw and laughing at their freaked out passengers. Another suggests that the passengers had leaned back in the rickshaw during an uphill climb, making the load heavier for the drivers. Displeased, they had stopped the rickshaw and asked their passengers to lean forward but due to a break in communication, the ladies didn’t. The resulting seesaw was the result of that.
Whatever the offense had been, it seemed Grogan and the settler community milked it to show their defiance of the colonial government. It was the first decade of settlement, and the government already had a hard time keeping the settlers in check. Grogan was jailed for one month and fined Rs. 500. Bowker and Gray were detained for 14 days and fined Rs. 250 while Fichat was only jailed for 14 days. Low, a newspaper man and the editor of The Star, was jailed for seven days. The sentences were for illegal assembly; the assault charge never came up. Where to jail the men then became a bone of contention. Two years before, a murder case against a newcomer had triggered outrage after he was held in a Mombasa jail for a whole year. The colonial government bargained with the settlers and agreed to have Grogan and his compatriots jailed at a building on Nairobi Hill, presumably Grogan’s Chiromo House.
***
In the previous murder case, a newly arrived immigrant called Max Wehner shot and killed a man he had hired as a guide to his hotel in Nakuru. When the body of the unnamed guide was found the next morning, he had two bullet wounds and his head was battered in.?Investigations showed Wehner had been jailed for murder in South America and had served time in South Africa for various crimes. The serial offender demanded a trial by jury for the murder case. The jury of five white men returned a verdict that he had indeed killed the Kenyan man but could not be held responsible because he was drunk at the time. The exact wording of their finding would later become a key point in the appeals. Chief Justice Hamilton, presiding over the trial, sentenced Wehner to death and his friend to a term of penal servitude. He must have known that his judgment would trigger a furor among the settlers.
Any case against a white man, especially where the supposed offence was against a black Kenyan, triggered unity among the settler community. Wehner was new in Kenya, and had hardly had time to make any friends. The case against him though, and the death sentence, won him many friends. Settlers then met in Nairobi to find loopholes in the case, including the fact that the first African witness had not been sworn in, and that the jury was sworn in after the first two Kenyan witnesses had given their testimony. The case went before the Court of Appeal in Zanzibar where the death sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life.
Undeterred, the settlers set up a defense fund to appeal to the Privy Council. The African Standard, the leading Kenyan newspaper at the time, joined in the campaign to raise a defense fund. In early 1906, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council overturned the convictions based on serious procedural errors. The two men were released and sent on their way to India.
There were two other cases before Grogan’s that brought the relationship between the settlers and the government to new lows. One was a case against two men called McCormick and McLeish in 1905 for shooting black Kenyans, killing elephants, and kidnapping Kenyan girls. In July the same year, a white farmer was tried for shooting and wounding a Kenyan. He claimed they had been creating a disturbance near his house while his wife was giving birth. What irked the settlers more was not the resulting six months imprisonment but the fact that he had been handcuffed and escorted to Nairobi by a black Kenyan policeman.
After Wehner, the next time a white settler would be convicted of causing harm to a Kenyan was in 1920. A brutal farmer called Hawkins had flogged several of his workers, including a pregnant woman. One of the victims died as a result of the injuries and Hawkins was jailed for only two years. It would be another four decades before the trapdoor opened for a white man, Peter Poole, and the noose tightened around his neck for killing a man called Kamawe Musungi. Grogan and his comrades got away with assault, as did many other settlers whose parternalistic attitudes towards Kenyans was shown in their brutality. Flogging was integrated into the penal code, primarily as a method of punishment for black Kenyans.
For a Full Transcript of ‘The Flogging of Natives, see this archive.
Featured Image from Nigel Pavitt’s 2008 book ‘Kenya: A Country in the Making 1880-1940.’ Image shows Government Road (now Moi Avenue) in the early 1900s.
QuadroK4000
Elder Lister
This is good stuff.
CHEPKUBE TOWN
Two events happened in the ’70s that turned scores of politically-connected Kenyans into instant millionaires and sharply increased the country’s foreign exchange reserves. They both involved coffee.
First, in July 1975, temperatures in Brazil plummeted to below freezing point, destroying more than 70 per cent of the South American nation’s crop.
This catastrophe in the world’s largest coffee growing country caused acute shortages in the global markets for years as prices hit the roof.
Then in July 1977, the erratic Idi Amin, who had taken power in a coup, rounded up all Americans living in Uganda. President Jimmy Carter responded by imposing a trade embargo on Uganda’s $250 million annual coffee trade with the United States.
It meant Uganda’s coffee farmers could only beat the embargo by selling through Kenya.
Kenya’s sophisticated elite and traders took full advantage of the global demand and Uganda’s troubles.
The epicentre of their black market trade was a small village in Bungoma on the Uganda border called Chepkube.
SMUGGLED COFFEE
Every night, between 1974 and 1978, trucks weighed down by thousands of bags of smuggled coffee rumbled along Chepkube’s narrow roads.
The coffee market usually opened at midnight to the wee hours of the morning. By sunrise, it was over.
As the illicit trade boomed, a new breed of carefree millionaires emerged in Kenya. They snapped up upper class properties in Nairobi and Mombasa, bought brand-new vehicles, flew first class, and uncorked extravagant wines at overnight parties for their friends and smuggler-equals.
The smugglers — a coterie of senior politicians, administrators, and traders — all hooked together by the cash-minting thrill at night, turned the once-sleepy village of Chepkube into a paradise — or simply, Black Gold City, as one newspaper called it.
Chepkube, with an estimated population of 2,400 in 1975, was a relatively easy crossing point for the smugglers. But it was not the only one.
Other black-markets had emerged at Sio Port and Alupe in Busia, creating a smugglers’ basin of fortune.
IMPACT ON ECONOMY
The impact on Kenya’s national economy was huge. In 1977, for instance, the balance of payments recorded a Sh2.2 billion surplus for the first time, while the foreign exchange reserves reached a record level of Sh2.7 billion.
The gross domestic product increased by 7.3 per cent in real terms, while the number of people in paid employment increased by 5.3 per cent.
On the other hand, the supply of money went up sharply by 47 per cent.
Back in Kampala, Amin had given his British military adviser, Bob Astles, permission to shoot all smugglers on sight. But his unpaid soldiers were part of the racket.
They would chase the farmers carrying coffee to snatch it from them and sell to their own agents. At that time, the value of the Ugandan shilling had plummeted, with Ush100 exchanging for Ksh10.
With basic commodities like sugar, soap, fuel, tea, and detergents lacking in Uganda, Kenyans did rolling barter trade at the border.
“If the Ugandan coffee farmer manages to reach the border with his commodity and sells it to either an agent or a dealer, the first thing he does is to buy at least a loaf of bread and eat it there...” wrote one columnist.
“The next thing he thinks of is to get hold of a drink… They make sure they do not carry the Kenyan money with them for fear that it may be snatched by the soldiers.”
ORIGIN OF BODA BODA
With Amin’s soldiers always on the lookout, smuggling brought with it a new mode of transporting the cargo in small packages. It was the bicycle which moved from border to border across the no-man’s land, evading customs and the soldiers.
The term boda boda originated from this trade.
The new coffee millionaires were not taxed after President Kenyatta refused to tax the incomes of the smallholder coffee producers during the boom period, leaving the windfall to the farmers.
The trade was risky and the coffee traders always went to Chepkube armed with guns.
Take the case of Joseph Mararu. He was arrested in 1977 with eight bags of coffee and charged with driving an unregistered vehicle, disobeying the local chief, dealing with coffee without a licence, and keeping a firearm in an unsafe place.
One reporter who travelled to Chepkube recalled that at the height of the boom, prostitutes charged Sh500 from a low of Sh50. (A bag of coffee cost between Sh400 and Sh500). A bush doctor had also opened shop at the centre to treat venereal diseases.
MUD WALLED STORES
Mud-walled coffee stores where the contraband was hidden had mushroomed at the centre, guarded by men armed with simis and hidden pistols.
One Saturday, December 18, 1976, things went badly wrong at Chepkube at about 4pm. Some people reportedly broke into one of the stores where coffee worth millions of shillings was hidden.
The owners of the coffee arrived with armed hoodlums and a fight with simis and pangas ensued. When calm was restored, 10 people lay dead and more than 40 injured.
Bungoma District Commissioner George Mwangi gave all non-resident traders in the market 24 hours to leave. They refused. That is how Joseph Mararu was arrested and charged with disobeying the local chief.
The gravity of the smuggling was exposed when Labour Minister, Ngala Mwendwa, told a meeting that the smugglers were senior government officials.
“They do it in government vehicles and, by virtue of their positions, no one can question them. You just salute and let them pass… I am sure President Kenyatta is not aware of such people.
He is just being told that certain commodities are missing, but it is not explained to him why and how they are missing. Otherwise, he would have fired such people on the spot.”
Those who managed to smuggle their produce past the police roadblocks eventually used their Coffee Board licences to pass the beans as genuine Kenyan produce or export it on their own.
BARS AND HOTELS
In Nairobi bars and hotels, the smugglers washed down their “hard work”. They abandoned taking ordinary beers. At worst they were at home taking Johnnie Walkers in upmarket bars or down at the coast, where beach plots were snapped on offer.
It is estimated that between 1976 and 1977, more than 30 per cent of Uganda’s coffee production of about 70,000 tonnes was smuggled into Kenya.
The smugglers spread their tentacles to the DR Congo, then known as Zaire. World Bank statistics show that about 40 per cent of Zaire’s produce was smuggled out between 1975 and 1977. Most of it passed through Kenya.
Then there were those who specialised in stealing from fellow smugglers. Others targeted coffee from local farmers.
In 1978, two MPs, Muhuri Muchiri of Embakasi and Makuyu’s Jesse Mwangi Gachago, were jailed for five years after they were found guilty of stealing coffee worth Sh1.2 million while in transit from Malaba to Mombasa. Muchiri had told the court that he had purchased the coffee for Sh380,000.
STATUTORY BODIES
In an effort to stem the smuggling, the Cabinet announced in February 1977 that all export and marketing of coffee, tea, cotton, and horticultural products must be carried out through statutory bodies.
The bodies were Coffee Board of Kenya, Tea Board, Horticultural Crops Development Authority, and Cotton Lint Marketing Board.
But nothing much changed. In fact, the smugglers started stealing coffee from local farmers.
On May 5, 1977, Kangema MP Joseph Kamotho asked the government to form an anti-coffee theft unit to crack down on the thieves.
Mr Kamotho said he had no quarrel with those who smuggled coffee at the border and sold it through their own ways because they brought the money back to the country.
“But I am worried about our farmers who at present are spending sleepless nights in fear that their hard-earned coffee might be stolen,” he said.
In June 1977, Attorney General Charles Njonjo told Parliament that customs and airport officials must be having deals with the black market racketeers.
CUSTOM OFFICERS
Mr Njonjo said that the thriving trade could not survive on such a large scale if the customs officers were strict. “Some of them must be in collusion with the racketeers,” he told Parliament.
Mr Njonjo noted that the black market in coffee was thriving, and that various commodities were being exported “tax free”.
He added: “Mysterious planes have been spotted at the airport. Where they have come from and what they do here nobody knows.
This is a serious matter because one day goods which could endanger the country’s security might be brought in without our knowledge.”
In June 1977, smugglers arrived at the Tanzania border town of Taveta looking for coffee. A report by the Kenya News Agency said that all available rooms in hotels and lodging houses were taken by “people never seen before in the area.”
Tanzania had in February that year closed her border with Kenya, leaving the country’s smugglers to transport the beans across the bush to Kenyan buyers.
“Transportation is done on people’s backs. They take it from Moshi area on the slopes of Mt Kilimanjaro, an area where coffee grows quite well,” the report said.
NEW ROUTES
Kiambu police in November 1978 announced that coffee smugglers were using new routes to avoid roadblocks.
A senior police spokesman told the press that police would continue to deal with people found smuggling coffee from Uganda until smuggling was stamped out.
He said smugglers had been using some of the routes used by Safari Rally drivers by diverting from the Narok road to Kibiku, Kiserian, and Ongata Rongai via Ngong to Nairobi.
Then the bubble burst. Coffee prices fell sharply at the end of 1978. At the national level, Kenya used the boom to build a solid postal service, an airline, and railways.
The coffee boom had cushioned the country from the shock of the 1977 oil crisis
Two events happened in the ’70s that turned scores of politically-connected Kenyans into instant millionaires and sharply increased the country’s foreign exchange reserves. They both involved coffee.
First, in July 1975, temperatures in Brazil plummeted to below freezing point, destroying more than 70 per cent of the South American nation’s crop.
This catastrophe in the world’s largest coffee growing country caused acute shortages in the global markets for years as prices hit the roof.
Then in July 1977, the erratic Idi Amin, who had taken power in a coup, rounded up all Americans living in Uganda. President Jimmy Carter responded by imposing a trade embargo on Uganda’s $250 million annual coffee trade with the United States.
It meant Uganda’s coffee farmers could only beat the embargo by selling through Kenya.
Kenya’s sophisticated elite and traders took full advantage of the global demand and Uganda’s troubles.
The epicentre of their black market trade was a small village in Bungoma on the Uganda border called Chepkube.
SMUGGLED COFFEE
Every night, between 1974 and 1978, trucks weighed down by thousands of bags of smuggled coffee rumbled along Chepkube’s narrow roads.
The coffee market usually opened at midnight to the wee hours of the morning. By sunrise, it was over.
As the illicit trade boomed, a new breed of carefree millionaires emerged in Kenya. They snapped up upper class properties in Nairobi and Mombasa, bought brand-new vehicles, flew first class, and uncorked extravagant wines at overnight parties for their friends and smuggler-equals.
The smugglers — a coterie of senior politicians, administrators, and traders — all hooked together by the cash-minting thrill at night, turned the once-sleepy village of Chepkube into a paradise — or simply, Black Gold City, as one newspaper called it.
Chepkube, with an estimated population of 2,400 in 1975, was a relatively easy crossing point for the smugglers. But it was not the only one.
Other black-markets had emerged at Sio Port and Alupe in Busia, creating a smugglers’ basin of fortune.
IMPACT ON ECONOMY
The impact on Kenya’s national economy was huge. In 1977, for instance, the balance of payments recorded a Sh2.2 billion surplus for the first time, while the foreign exchange reserves reached a record level of Sh2.7 billion.
The gross domestic product increased by 7.3 per cent in real terms, while the number of people in paid employment increased by 5.3 per cent.
On the other hand, the supply of money went up sharply by 47 per cent.
Back in Kampala, Amin had given his British military adviser, Bob Astles, permission to shoot all smugglers on sight. But his unpaid soldiers were part of the racket.
They would chase the farmers carrying coffee to snatch it from them and sell to their own agents. At that time, the value of the Ugandan shilling had plummeted, with Ush100 exchanging for Ksh10.
With basic commodities like sugar, soap, fuel, tea, and detergents lacking in Uganda, Kenyans did rolling barter trade at the border.
“If the Ugandan coffee farmer manages to reach the border with his commodity and sells it to either an agent or a dealer, the first thing he does is to buy at least a loaf of bread and eat it there...” wrote one columnist.
“The next thing he thinks of is to get hold of a drink… They make sure they do not carry the Kenyan money with them for fear that it may be snatched by the soldiers.”
ORIGIN OF BODA BODA
With Amin’s soldiers always on the lookout, smuggling brought with it a new mode of transporting the cargo in small packages. It was the bicycle which moved from border to border across the no-man’s land, evading customs and the soldiers.
The term boda boda originated from this trade.
The new coffee millionaires were not taxed after President Kenyatta refused to tax the incomes of the smallholder coffee producers during the boom period, leaving the windfall to the farmers.
The trade was risky and the coffee traders always went to Chepkube armed with guns.
Take the case of Joseph Mararu. He was arrested in 1977 with eight bags of coffee and charged with driving an unregistered vehicle, disobeying the local chief, dealing with coffee without a licence, and keeping a firearm in an unsafe place.
One reporter who travelled to Chepkube recalled that at the height of the boom, prostitutes charged Sh500 from a low of Sh50. (A bag of coffee cost between Sh400 and Sh500). A bush doctor had also opened shop at the centre to treat venereal diseases.
MUD WALLED STORES
Mud-walled coffee stores where the contraband was hidden had mushroomed at the centre, guarded by men armed with simis and hidden pistols.
One Saturday, December 18, 1976, things went badly wrong at Chepkube at about 4pm. Some people reportedly broke into one of the stores where coffee worth millions of shillings was hidden.
The owners of the coffee arrived with armed hoodlums and a fight with simis and pangas ensued. When calm was restored, 10 people lay dead and more than 40 injured.
Bungoma District Commissioner George Mwangi gave all non-resident traders in the market 24 hours to leave. They refused. That is how Joseph Mararu was arrested and charged with disobeying the local chief.
The gravity of the smuggling was exposed when Labour Minister, Ngala Mwendwa, told a meeting that the smugglers were senior government officials.
“They do it in government vehicles and, by virtue of their positions, no one can question them. You just salute and let them pass… I am sure President Kenyatta is not aware of such people.
He is just being told that certain commodities are missing, but it is not explained to him why and how they are missing. Otherwise, he would have fired such people on the spot.”
Those who managed to smuggle their produce past the police roadblocks eventually used their Coffee Board licences to pass the beans as genuine Kenyan produce or export it on their own.
BARS AND HOTELS
In Nairobi bars and hotels, the smugglers washed down their “hard work”. They abandoned taking ordinary beers. At worst they were at home taking Johnnie Walkers in upmarket bars or down at the coast, where beach plots were snapped on offer.
It is estimated that between 1976 and 1977, more than 30 per cent of Uganda’s coffee production of about 70,000 tonnes was smuggled into Kenya.
The smugglers spread their tentacles to the DR Congo, then known as Zaire. World Bank statistics show that about 40 per cent of Zaire’s produce was smuggled out between 1975 and 1977. Most of it passed through Kenya.
Then there were those who specialised in stealing from fellow smugglers. Others targeted coffee from local farmers.
In 1978, two MPs, Muhuri Muchiri of Embakasi and Makuyu’s Jesse Mwangi Gachago, were jailed for five years after they were found guilty of stealing coffee worth Sh1.2 million while in transit from Malaba to Mombasa. Muchiri had told the court that he had purchased the coffee for Sh380,000.
STATUTORY BODIES
In an effort to stem the smuggling, the Cabinet announced in February 1977 that all export and marketing of coffee, tea, cotton, and horticultural products must be carried out through statutory bodies.
The bodies were Coffee Board of Kenya, Tea Board, Horticultural Crops Development Authority, and Cotton Lint Marketing Board.
But nothing much changed. In fact, the smugglers started stealing coffee from local farmers.
On May 5, 1977, Kangema MP Joseph Kamotho asked the government to form an anti-coffee theft unit to crack down on the thieves.
Mr Kamotho said he had no quarrel with those who smuggled coffee at the border and sold it through their own ways because they brought the money back to the country.
“But I am worried about our farmers who at present are spending sleepless nights in fear that their hard-earned coffee might be stolen,” he said.
In June 1977, Attorney General Charles Njonjo told Parliament that customs and airport officials must be having deals with the black market racketeers.
CUSTOM OFFICERS
Mr Njonjo said that the thriving trade could not survive on such a large scale if the customs officers were strict. “Some of them must be in collusion with the racketeers,” he told Parliament.
Mr Njonjo noted that the black market in coffee was thriving, and that various commodities were being exported “tax free”.
He added: “Mysterious planes have been spotted at the airport. Where they have come from and what they do here nobody knows.
This is a serious matter because one day goods which could endanger the country’s security might be brought in without our knowledge.”
In June 1977, smugglers arrived at the Tanzania border town of Taveta looking for coffee. A report by the Kenya News Agency said that all available rooms in hotels and lodging houses were taken by “people never seen before in the area.”
Tanzania had in February that year closed her border with Kenya, leaving the country’s smugglers to transport the beans across the bush to Kenyan buyers.
“Transportation is done on people’s backs. They take it from Moshi area on the slopes of Mt Kilimanjaro, an area where coffee grows quite well,” the report said.
NEW ROUTES
Kiambu police in November 1978 announced that coffee smugglers were using new routes to avoid roadblocks.
A senior police spokesman told the press that police would continue to deal with people found smuggling coffee from Uganda until smuggling was stamped out.
He said smugglers had been using some of the routes used by Safari Rally drivers by diverting from the Narok road to Kibiku, Kiserian, and Ongata Rongai via Ngong to Nairobi.
Then the bubble burst. Coffee prices fell sharply at the end of 1978. At the national level, Kenya used the boom to build a solid postal service, an airline, and railways.
The coffee boom had cushioned the country from the shock of the 1977 oil crisis
THE STORY OF KAMANKURA AND THE MIRAA
Legend has it that during a particularly long drought that came upon the land of the prophet Mugwe, the people prayed to the god of the mountain Mwene Nyaga for rains to no avail. Plants, animals and people began dying from the famine that ensued, which prompted the people to seek the counsel of the old wise men representing the clans of the Ameru- the Njuri Ncheke.
Despite the hefty fee that was attached to their wise counsel, the council of elders could not come up with a solution for the predicament and upon long deliberations, countless sacrifices and despite the fervent prayers, the clouds failed to gather over the slopes of mount Kirimara where the Ameru had settled after fleeing from ‘Mbwa’ Island where they had been held in slavery and captivity for generations.
After pulling all sorts of antics in efforts to appease the god of the mountain -the almighty ‘Murungu’ -in a bid to persuade him to bring rain upon the land of the sons of Mugwe, the people led by the Njuri Nceke were teetering on the brink of resigning themselves to their fate of imminent death by starvation, when a particularly quiet member of the council of elders representing one of the less affluent clans of the Ameru offered a solution: “Why don’t we pick out from amongst ourselves the toughest, strongest and most courageous of our warriors to travel to the foot of the great mountain and beseech the great prophet Mugwe to intercede on our behalf to Murungu for sustenance or else we’ll all die.”
Not many people had heard of, let alone seen this Mugwe. Rumor had it that he was a very old man –hundreds of years old- who lived in solitude in a big cave at the foot of the Kirimara mountain and who was rumored to have the abilities to communicate with Murungu directly. Legend had it that upon leading his people from their captivity at Mbwaa island in the coastal region, he retreated to the foot of the mountain from where he would make the long journey to the settlements to pass decrees from Murungu to the people. He never sat nor accepted anything to eat or drink during any of his visits. But that was until many years ago when the visits to the village stopped abruptly and for decades no one had seen nor heard from Mugwe. Some said the old man had finally gone berserk and got eaten by wild animals. Others said he had died from old age. However, others like the old council member, insisted that their only way out, their last resort, was good old mysterious Mugwe. As far as most villagers were concerned though, Mugwe was a tall tale passed down across generations of the Ameru to instill some lesson or the other among the villagers.
Despite the glaring pessimism, it became apparent to the villagers that not only did they have no other options, they really had nothing to lose. The options before them were either to take no action and certainly die or stake the fate of the entire village to what could have very well been a myth and most probably die. The latter proved to be the saner of the two absurdities.
The Council’s vote was as close to unanimous as it could get. Chosen from among the young Ameru warriors was a young, sturdy and boisterous young man who had been involved in more conquests of protecting the Ameru from external aggressors like the Bantu-speaking tribes from the west eying their lush green lands and the Cushitic nomad clans from the north eying their cattle. His name was Kamankura, the firstborn son of a local farmer. He was tasked with the treacherous quest of going to seek out Mugwe for his intervention to Murungu. The journey would see him cross enemy territories, paths filled with numerous perils and face the risk of starvation, dehydration, capture and execution by enemy tribes for suspicion of being a spy.
“I choose, Kamankura”
For God, Honor and Community
Naturally, Kamankura wasn’t particularly thrilled by the prospects that lay before him. Why him? What would happen was he to encounter enemies, the wild animals that freely roamed the terrain or the multitude of perils that were strewn across his path? Was this the prize for being one of the best village protectors the Ameru had ever known? Was backing down and in the process injuring his father’s, clan’s and villagers’ pride an option? Was he willing to risk banishment for failing to step up to the plate? What would he tell Ciari, the girl he had been courting and had promised marriage? Would he still have her love and respect should he take the easier option? Supposing she stayed after he backed down, would she still look at him the same way?
All these questions and possible scenarios played through his mind over and over even as he bowed before the Njuri Nceke two days later to receive his blessings as his father handed him his ‘coming of age’ spear which he was supposed to give him on the day of his wedding. His peers danced around him singing songs of praise to God, Kamankura and the great people of Meru. Ciari watched the festivities from a distance alongside the other womenfolk (who were not allowed to participate directly in the event), fully aware that it may very well be the last time she saw the man she loved.
Bright and early the next morning escorted by his closest friends or ‘wachia’ (which means boys in his age group that he had undergone initiation with) Kamankura left without as much as a goodbye to Ciari. He didn’t trust his resolve to go forth into the unknown while looking into Ciari’s big milk-white eyes that first drew him to her on a supervised village dance many moons ago. That, and the fact that it was considered a great taboo for a ‘nthaka’ (an initiated eligible bachelor) to show any form of weakness in front of womenfolk.
And so with a heavy heat, Kamankura set out on his mission with nothing but his father’s spear, his bow and quiver of arrows, a goatskin of water and a strong resolve in his mind that he was neither doing this for the elders nor for myths he neither subscribed to nor believed in but rather for love, honor and his people.
The road to Damascus and the kindness of a stranger
Like all human beings, Kamankura was not without fault. Being a revered and highly regarded warrior among his peers and fellow villagers coupled with the fact that Kamankura had been blessed with the tall, dark and handsome physical attributes that village girls found irresistible, he had over the years developed an air of pride and arrogance. Furthermore, he abhorred authority, constantly clashed with the authorities that were (religious and political) and having gotten used to getting things his way, Kamankura often crossed that line between self-assured and condescending yet despite all his youthful pride and rebelliousness, his heart — his most attractive feature- was always in the right place, a fact that endeared him to Murungu.
Although everybody loved him (or so he thought) very few people got to see the inner Kamankura, perhaps too dazzled by the exquisite exterior he often projected. Those few people were his mother, Mbogori a member of Njuri Nceke who often chided, counseled and constantly averted trouble between him and the council and Ciari, a reserved village beauty, as he would come to later find out during one of the occasional village dance nights. Not a single girl had ever turned down his advances and the charms of the tall, dark charmer were well known and whispered about by girls even as far as the neighboring Agikuyu and Akamba tribes. That was until the night of the village dance where he had approached Ciari with the cocky assuredness of an experienced pick-up artist only for her to rebuff his advances politely but assertively. He had seen her for the first time that evening from across the huge bonfire that had been lit at the village square as she and other girls danced around the bonfire under the watchful eyes of their guardians and supervisors. The way she danced around the fire all carefree and at the same time somewhat guarded had left his entire being full of goddamns, only for her to turn him down. Didn’t she know who he was? She couldn’t have cared less. He vowed to tame her. She vowed to humble him. Neither of them succeeded.
Unbeknownst to Kamankura, the mission, the journey and every encounter along the way was a test. Murungu had placed certain challenges and obstacles throughout the journey that would test not only his strength and faith but more so his character which was not only changed but revealed to him. The journey would go on to become his ‘Road to Damascus’.
Needless to say, Kamankura failed all but one test and would have failed his mission and in the process lost his own life in addition to costing the lives of the entire Ameru people, were it not for the kindness of a stranger towards the end of his journey (who turned out to be Mugwe in disguise *story for another day* Kamankura successfully completed his mission, Murungu heard the prayers of the Ameru, the rains eventually fell, Kamankura returned home into the waiting arms of his proud father, peers and the love of his life Ciari, forever a changed man. The man that came back was a far cry from the proud, boisterous and aggressive man he had been before. He wed Ciari in a low-key ceremony in the village and the two lived happily ever after. The tale of Kamankura would go on to be told among the Ameru people of Kenya in East Africa over the years and passed down across generations of the Ameru to present day.
Even as the rain fell hard and fast across Meru land following Kamankura’s return, it turned out that the soil had been so badly scorched by the drought that nothing sprouted from it. To make matters worse the famine had been so severe that the people had consumed nearly all the grain reserves that were usually stored for planting during the rainy season. The joy that that usually accompanied the coming of the rains soon turned into despair, which arose from the fact that the damaged earth could not be cultivated for food for the people nor for their livestock in form of pasture. The much awaited rains had come but they had not brought the food and sustenance that the people really needed at the time.
In classic human nature, the people started complaining, much like the biblical Isralites complained to Moses during the Exodus from Egypt to the promised land. Had Murungu sent them rains only to starve them to death with the barren fields? What sort of mystical sadism was this.
KHAT OR MIï RAA
It’s official. Khat (miraa) has officially dethroned weed as the most misunderstood plant in the world. All hail the shrub!
But why all the hullabaloo over this seemingly harmless shrub? Is it really as dangerous as it has in recent times been branded and perhaps more importantly, where did it come from?
As the story of Kamankura continues here more
Even as the rain fell hard and fast across Meru land following Kamankura’s return, it turned out that the soil had been so badly scorched by the drought that nothing sprouted from it. To make matters worse the famine had been so severe that the people had consumed nearly all the grain reserves that were usually stored for planting during the rainy season. The joy that that usually accompanied the coming of the rains soon turned into despair, which arose from the fact that the damaged earth could not be cultivated for food for the people nor for their livestock in form of pasture. The much awaited rains had come but they had not brought the food and sustenance that the people really needed at the time.
In classic human nature, the people started complaining, much like the biblical Isralites complained to Moses during the Exodus from Egypt to the promised land. Had Murungu sent them rains only to starve them to death with the barren fields? What sort of mystical sadism was this?
Miraa starts sprouting
In an unprecedented turn of events, a strange phenomenon took place across slopes of the land. Strange shoots started sprouting over the barren earth; shoots that only a handful of old village merchants claimed to have seen among their Cushitic and arab trading counterparts from the north during their trade activities way back in the day. To the rest of the community these were alien plants that seemed to have sprouted out of nowhere overnight.
They called them ‘Miraa’ a term derived from the kimeru word ‘raa’ which means to blossom or shoot.
Miraa khat plants
Apprehensive about this strange shoot, the people were reluctant to try it out although the herders could do little to restrain the cattle from munching on the green shrub with bright red shoots. The goats in particular seemed to enjoy the strange shrubs. The Njuri Ncheke strongly cautioned the people against consuming plant, threatening with dire consequences anyone that was caught consuming the plant. The words ‘evil’, ‘poisonous’, ‘enemy black magic’ and ‘curse’ were thrown around in reference to the strange plants as the shrub continued to cover the once barren slopes in immaculate green and red foliage that completely transformed the landscape.
Some villagers, particularly the poor who had been hardest hit by the famine to the extent of experiencing death from starvation within their immediate families questioned the council’s directive especially since it became apparent that the animals seemed to thrive from consuming the plant while the people- at least the wretches at the bottom of the social-economic pyramid at the time- continued to starve having depleted the little reserves of food they had.
Within no time, a sort of cold rebellion began to develop between the two factions that had emerged over the issue: the rich (who owned vast pieces of land, grain reserves in their granaries and large heads of cattle) supporting the council of elders and the poor (led by the peasant farmers owning small tracks of land, fast depleting heads of cattle and empty granaries) questioning the elders’ authority to dictate what they could or could not consume in light of the fact that the governing class did not provide any sort of assistance or aid to the starving peasants. The peasants agitated for the freedom to choose their ‘deaths’ if indeed the shrubs were poisonous to humans.
Kamankura’s Take – Eat Miraa or not?
This tag and pull soon found its way to Kamankura and Ciari’s doorstep. Since his triumphant return from his perilous journey barely a month back, the people, especially the disenfranchised class viewed him as their unofficial ‘chief’, which went directly against the prevalent unwritten rules of the Ameru, much to the chagrin of the Njuri. The tradition and culture of the Ameru not only forbid but also condemned the elevation of an individual member of the society to chief or king under any circumstances. Instead, the Ameru lived under the leadership of and wise counsel of the respective clan patriarchs who in turn formed the council of elders or Njuri whose mandate traversed the legislative (law making), judicial (dispute settling), executive (center of power) and religious facets of the community.
On his part, Kamankura had no intentions nor desire whatsoever to be leader in any way shape of form. He had made this clear by relinquishing his previous position as leader of the warrior facet of the community, which regarded him as a general. He had chosen instead to retreat to a quiet family life with his newly wed wife Ciari on a small piece of land in the outskirts of the village.
It took Ciari’s, herself an offspring of the peasant class, intervention and her unwavering faith in him to persuade him to hear out his fellow kinsmen’s plights and open his doors to them for advice and counsel in light of his encounter with Mugwe himself. Kamankura informed the dissenters that Mugwe had said that Murungu had no intention of destroying his people provided they obeyed his laws, did good and led a peaceful co-existence with each other and that faith would be the defining factor in the relationship.
In return he would provide sustenance for his people until the end of time.
“So should we then indulge in the forbidden shrub?”
“Are the proponents of abstinence going out of their way to share their food reserves with the starving lot of you?
“No.”
“Then what gives them the right to dictate what to or not to consume from the land Murungu gave us? Will you watch your children and cattle die for fear of upsetting the people you entrusted with your well-being as a society?”
The people needed no further prompting. Screw the elders and their directives.
And just like that, Kamankura earned himself the title of “enemy number one” of the rich class and the Njuri
Chewing miraa
The herders were the first to try out the slightly bitter shoots. They let the cattle out to graze. The strange shoots when chewed and their juice ingested not only relieved thirst but increased alertness, elevated dispositions and alleviated hunger pangs. The shrub sustained them as well as their animals until planting and harvesting was done and they resulted back to their food crop cultivation in place of the shrubs christened ‘the shrubs of Mugwe’.
A few people had however cultivated the shrub for their own domestic use and later on these brave rebels would go on to become the present day entrepreneurs in the extremely lucrative miraa trade synonymous with the County of Meru, particularly the Igembe and Tigania.
Legalize it
Fast forward to today and khat has officially dethroned weed as the most controversial plant in present day social-economic circles.
TODAY;
khat miraa farm
The United Kingdom’s decision to ban miraa (against expert advice) in July 2014 caused ripples across the country more so in the Meru County region of Nyambene where ‘miraa’ is the predominant cash crop employing tens of thousands directly and indirectly and exporting 2000 tons of the product to the UK annually.
The controversy surrounding miraa has always been kind of hush hush but picked momentum in 2013 all the way to 2014 before exploding into the international limelight when the Netherlands — considered one of the most liberal nations in the world- banned khat. When the UK quickly followed suit a few months later, the quiet furor surrounding this ever-green shrub suddenly became hard to ignore.
Legend has it that during a particularly long drought that came upon the land of the prophet Mugwe, the people prayed to the god of the mountain Mwene Nyaga for rains to no avail. Plants, animals and people began dying from the famine that ensued, which prompted the people to seek the counsel of the old wise men representing the clans of the Ameru- the Njuri Ncheke.
Despite the hefty fee that was attached to their wise counsel, the council of elders could not come up with a solution for the predicament and upon long deliberations, countless sacrifices and despite the fervent prayers, the clouds failed to gather over the slopes of mount Kirimara where the Ameru had settled after fleeing from ‘Mbwa’ Island where they had been held in slavery and captivity for generations.
After pulling all sorts of antics in efforts to appease the god of the mountain -the almighty ‘Murungu’ -in a bid to persuade him to bring rain upon the land of the sons of Mugwe, the people led by the Njuri Nceke were teetering on the brink of resigning themselves to their fate of imminent death by starvation, when a particularly quiet member of the council of elders representing one of the less affluent clans of the Ameru offered a solution: “Why don’t we pick out from amongst ourselves the toughest, strongest and most courageous of our warriors to travel to the foot of the great mountain and beseech the great prophet Mugwe to intercede on our behalf to Murungu for sustenance or else we’ll all die.”
Not many people had heard of, let alone seen this Mugwe. Rumor had it that he was a very old man –hundreds of years old- who lived in solitude in a big cave at the foot of the Kirimara mountain and who was rumored to have the abilities to communicate with Murungu directly. Legend had it that upon leading his people from their captivity at Mbwaa island in the coastal region, he retreated to the foot of the mountain from where he would make the long journey to the settlements to pass decrees from Murungu to the people. He never sat nor accepted anything to eat or drink during any of his visits. But that was until many years ago when the visits to the village stopped abruptly and for decades no one had seen nor heard from Mugwe. Some said the old man had finally gone berserk and got eaten by wild animals. Others said he had died from old age. However, others like the old council member, insisted that their only way out, their last resort, was good old mysterious Mugwe. As far as most villagers were concerned though, Mugwe was a tall tale passed down across generations of the Ameru to instill some lesson or the other among the villagers.
Despite the glaring pessimism, it became apparent to the villagers that not only did they have no other options, they really had nothing to lose. The options before them were either to take no action and certainly die or stake the fate of the entire village to what could have very well been a myth and most probably die. The latter proved to be the saner of the two absurdities.
The Council’s vote was as close to unanimous as it could get. Chosen from among the young Ameru warriors was a young, sturdy and boisterous young man who had been involved in more conquests of protecting the Ameru from external aggressors like the Bantu-speaking tribes from the west eying their lush green lands and the Cushitic nomad clans from the north eying their cattle. His name was Kamankura, the firstborn son of a local farmer. He was tasked with the treacherous quest of going to seek out Mugwe for his intervention to Murungu. The journey would see him cross enemy territories, paths filled with numerous perils and face the risk of starvation, dehydration, capture and execution by enemy tribes for suspicion of being a spy.
“I choose, Kamankura”
For God, Honor and Community
Naturally, Kamankura wasn’t particularly thrilled by the prospects that lay before him. Why him? What would happen was he to encounter enemies, the wild animals that freely roamed the terrain or the multitude of perils that were strewn across his path? Was this the prize for being one of the best village protectors the Ameru had ever known? Was backing down and in the process injuring his father’s, clan’s and villagers’ pride an option? Was he willing to risk banishment for failing to step up to the plate? What would he tell Ciari, the girl he had been courting and had promised marriage? Would he still have her love and respect should he take the easier option? Supposing she stayed after he backed down, would she still look at him the same way?
All these questions and possible scenarios played through his mind over and over even as he bowed before the Njuri Nceke two days later to receive his blessings as his father handed him his ‘coming of age’ spear which he was supposed to give him on the day of his wedding. His peers danced around him singing songs of praise to God, Kamankura and the great people of Meru. Ciari watched the festivities from a distance alongside the other womenfolk (who were not allowed to participate directly in the event), fully aware that it may very well be the last time she saw the man she loved.
Bright and early the next morning escorted by his closest friends or ‘wachia’ (which means boys in his age group that he had undergone initiation with) Kamankura left without as much as a goodbye to Ciari. He didn’t trust his resolve to go forth into the unknown while looking into Ciari’s big milk-white eyes that first drew him to her on a supervised village dance many moons ago. That, and the fact that it was considered a great taboo for a ‘nthaka’ (an initiated eligible bachelor) to show any form of weakness in front of womenfolk.
And so with a heavy heat, Kamankura set out on his mission with nothing but his father’s spear, his bow and quiver of arrows, a goatskin of water and a strong resolve in his mind that he was neither doing this for the elders nor for myths he neither subscribed to nor believed in but rather for love, honor and his people.
The road to Damascus and the kindness of a stranger
Like all human beings, Kamankura was not without fault. Being a revered and highly regarded warrior among his peers and fellow villagers coupled with the fact that Kamankura had been blessed with the tall, dark and handsome physical attributes that village girls found irresistible, he had over the years developed an air of pride and arrogance. Furthermore, he abhorred authority, constantly clashed with the authorities that were (religious and political) and having gotten used to getting things his way, Kamankura often crossed that line between self-assured and condescending yet despite all his youthful pride and rebelliousness, his heart — his most attractive feature- was always in the right place, a fact that endeared him to Murungu.
Although everybody loved him (or so he thought) very few people got to see the inner Kamankura, perhaps too dazzled by the exquisite exterior he often projected. Those few people were his mother, Mbogori a member of Njuri Nceke who often chided, counseled and constantly averted trouble between him and the council and Ciari, a reserved village beauty, as he would come to later find out during one of the occasional village dance nights. Not a single girl had ever turned down his advances and the charms of the tall, dark charmer were well known and whispered about by girls even as far as the neighboring Agikuyu and Akamba tribes. That was until the night of the village dance where he had approached Ciari with the cocky assuredness of an experienced pick-up artist only for her to rebuff his advances politely but assertively. He had seen her for the first time that evening from across the huge bonfire that had been lit at the village square as she and other girls danced around the bonfire under the watchful eyes of their guardians and supervisors. The way she danced around the fire all carefree and at the same time somewhat guarded had left his entire being full of goddamns, only for her to turn him down. Didn’t she know who he was? She couldn’t have cared less. He vowed to tame her. She vowed to humble him. Neither of them succeeded.
Unbeknownst to Kamankura, the mission, the journey and every encounter along the way was a test. Murungu had placed certain challenges and obstacles throughout the journey that would test not only his strength and faith but more so his character which was not only changed but revealed to him. The journey would go on to become his ‘Road to Damascus’.
Needless to say, Kamankura failed all but one test and would have failed his mission and in the process lost his own life in addition to costing the lives of the entire Ameru people, were it not for the kindness of a stranger towards the end of his journey (who turned out to be Mugwe in disguise *story for another day* Kamankura successfully completed his mission, Murungu heard the prayers of the Ameru, the rains eventually fell, Kamankura returned home into the waiting arms of his proud father, peers and the love of his life Ciari, forever a changed man. The man that came back was a far cry from the proud, boisterous and aggressive man he had been before. He wed Ciari in a low-key ceremony in the village and the two lived happily ever after. The tale of Kamankura would go on to be told among the Ameru people of Kenya in East Africa over the years and passed down across generations of the Ameru to present day.
Even as the rain fell hard and fast across Meru land following Kamankura’s return, it turned out that the soil had been so badly scorched by the drought that nothing sprouted from it. To make matters worse the famine had been so severe that the people had consumed nearly all the grain reserves that were usually stored for planting during the rainy season. The joy that that usually accompanied the coming of the rains soon turned into despair, which arose from the fact that the damaged earth could not be cultivated for food for the people nor for their livestock in form of pasture. The much awaited rains had come but they had not brought the food and sustenance that the people really needed at the time.
In classic human nature, the people started complaining, much like the biblical Isralites complained to Moses during the Exodus from Egypt to the promised land. Had Murungu sent them rains only to starve them to death with the barren fields? What sort of mystical sadism was this.
KHAT OR MIï RAA
It’s official. Khat (miraa) has officially dethroned weed as the most misunderstood plant in the world. All hail the shrub!
But why all the hullabaloo over this seemingly harmless shrub? Is it really as dangerous as it has in recent times been branded and perhaps more importantly, where did it come from?
As the story of Kamankura continues here more
Even as the rain fell hard and fast across Meru land following Kamankura’s return, it turned out that the soil had been so badly scorched by the drought that nothing sprouted from it. To make matters worse the famine had been so severe that the people had consumed nearly all the grain reserves that were usually stored for planting during the rainy season. The joy that that usually accompanied the coming of the rains soon turned into despair, which arose from the fact that the damaged earth could not be cultivated for food for the people nor for their livestock in form of pasture. The much awaited rains had come but they had not brought the food and sustenance that the people really needed at the time.
In classic human nature, the people started complaining, much like the biblical Isralites complained to Moses during the Exodus from Egypt to the promised land. Had Murungu sent them rains only to starve them to death with the barren fields? What sort of mystical sadism was this?
Miraa starts sprouting
In an unprecedented turn of events, a strange phenomenon took place across slopes of the land. Strange shoots started sprouting over the barren earth; shoots that only a handful of old village merchants claimed to have seen among their Cushitic and arab trading counterparts from the north during their trade activities way back in the day. To the rest of the community these were alien plants that seemed to have sprouted out of nowhere overnight.
They called them ‘Miraa’ a term derived from the kimeru word ‘raa’ which means to blossom or shoot.
Miraa khat plants
Apprehensive about this strange shoot, the people were reluctant to try it out although the herders could do little to restrain the cattle from munching on the green shrub with bright red shoots. The goats in particular seemed to enjoy the strange shrubs. The Njuri Ncheke strongly cautioned the people against consuming plant, threatening with dire consequences anyone that was caught consuming the plant. The words ‘evil’, ‘poisonous’, ‘enemy black magic’ and ‘curse’ were thrown around in reference to the strange plants as the shrub continued to cover the once barren slopes in immaculate green and red foliage that completely transformed the landscape.
Some villagers, particularly the poor who had been hardest hit by the famine to the extent of experiencing death from starvation within their immediate families questioned the council’s directive especially since it became apparent that the animals seemed to thrive from consuming the plant while the people- at least the wretches at the bottom of the social-economic pyramid at the time- continued to starve having depleted the little reserves of food they had.
Within no time, a sort of cold rebellion began to develop between the two factions that had emerged over the issue: the rich (who owned vast pieces of land, grain reserves in their granaries and large heads of cattle) supporting the council of elders and the poor (led by the peasant farmers owning small tracks of land, fast depleting heads of cattle and empty granaries) questioning the elders’ authority to dictate what they could or could not consume in light of the fact that the governing class did not provide any sort of assistance or aid to the starving peasants. The peasants agitated for the freedom to choose their ‘deaths’ if indeed the shrubs were poisonous to humans.
Kamankura’s Take – Eat Miraa or not?
This tag and pull soon found its way to Kamankura and Ciari’s doorstep. Since his triumphant return from his perilous journey barely a month back, the people, especially the disenfranchised class viewed him as their unofficial ‘chief’, which went directly against the prevalent unwritten rules of the Ameru, much to the chagrin of the Njuri. The tradition and culture of the Ameru not only forbid but also condemned the elevation of an individual member of the society to chief or king under any circumstances. Instead, the Ameru lived under the leadership of and wise counsel of the respective clan patriarchs who in turn formed the council of elders or Njuri whose mandate traversed the legislative (law making), judicial (dispute settling), executive (center of power) and religious facets of the community.
On his part, Kamankura had no intentions nor desire whatsoever to be leader in any way shape of form. He had made this clear by relinquishing his previous position as leader of the warrior facet of the community, which regarded him as a general. He had chosen instead to retreat to a quiet family life with his newly wed wife Ciari on a small piece of land in the outskirts of the village.
It took Ciari’s, herself an offspring of the peasant class, intervention and her unwavering faith in him to persuade him to hear out his fellow kinsmen’s plights and open his doors to them for advice and counsel in light of his encounter with Mugwe himself. Kamankura informed the dissenters that Mugwe had said that Murungu had no intention of destroying his people provided they obeyed his laws, did good and led a peaceful co-existence with each other and that faith would be the defining factor in the relationship.
In return he would provide sustenance for his people until the end of time.
“So should we then indulge in the forbidden shrub?”
“Are the proponents of abstinence going out of their way to share their food reserves with the starving lot of you?
“No.”
“Then what gives them the right to dictate what to or not to consume from the land Murungu gave us? Will you watch your children and cattle die for fear of upsetting the people you entrusted with your well-being as a society?”
The people needed no further prompting. Screw the elders and their directives.
And just like that, Kamankura earned himself the title of “enemy number one” of the rich class and the Njuri
Chewing miraa
The herders were the first to try out the slightly bitter shoots. They let the cattle out to graze. The strange shoots when chewed and their juice ingested not only relieved thirst but increased alertness, elevated dispositions and alleviated hunger pangs. The shrub sustained them as well as their animals until planting and harvesting was done and they resulted back to their food crop cultivation in place of the shrubs christened ‘the shrubs of Mugwe’.
A few people had however cultivated the shrub for their own domestic use and later on these brave rebels would go on to become the present day entrepreneurs in the extremely lucrative miraa trade synonymous with the County of Meru, particularly the Igembe and Tigania.
Legalize it
Fast forward to today and khat has officially dethroned weed as the most controversial plant in present day social-economic circles.
TODAY;
khat miraa farm
The United Kingdom’s decision to ban miraa (against expert advice) in July 2014 caused ripples across the country more so in the Meru County region of Nyambene where ‘miraa’ is the predominant cash crop employing tens of thousands directly and indirectly and exporting 2000 tons of the product to the UK annually.
The controversy surrounding miraa has always been kind of hush hush but picked momentum in 2013 all the way to 2014 before exploding into the international limelight when the Netherlands — considered one of the most liberal nations in the world- banned khat. When the UK quickly followed suit a few months later, the quiet furor surrounding this ever-green shrub suddenly became hard to ignore.
HOW KENYA “BECAME”
Reverend Doctor Johann Ludwig Krapf (1810 – 1881) is well known among many other things as being the first European missionary to set up a church in the coast of Kenya. The actual site is at Rabai in the present Kilifi County. Close to the mission was a Kamba village that was used by Kamba traders as a resting and re-stocking station by caravans that were bringing goods from all over eastern Africa. At that time the Akamba dominated the coast- to -inland trade and had a network caravan routes traversing eastern Africa that needed courage and skill to utilise. Krapf was interested in establishing missions in inland Kenya, and therefore he befriended a well-known caravan leader known as Kivui wa Mwenda (who historians mistakenly refer to as chief kivoi).
Kivui journeyed with Krapf to one his home which was near the present site of Kitui town. Thus, Krapf became the first European to ‘explore’ this part of East Africa. On the morning of 3rd December 1849, Kivui showed the German a snow-covered mountain whose peaks to the Akamba resembled the beautiful black and white plumes of the male ostrich. “That is Ki-nyaa” Kivui told the astonished Reverend. The Kamba word for the large, wild and flightless ostritch bird is “nyaa”. Krapf reported this mountain in Europe as Kenia. This is the name that was used thereafter to identify the Equator-straddling mountain, and that part of East Africa. The name eventually passed on to the colony and independent republic.
The first pic is Ludwig Kraft and the Rabai mission,2nd pic is a painting by Jack Sullivan 1890 of Kraft and his pack being shown the Ostrich plummage like mountain"kinyaa" at the top of kwa vonza exhibited at butetown art center in Britain,the third pic is the slab at the top of kwa vonza where a wooden cross is also planted there to mark the point to date
Reverend Doctor Johann Ludwig Krapf (1810 – 1881) is well known among many other things as being the first European missionary to set up a church in the coast of Kenya. The actual site is at Rabai in the present Kilifi County. Close to the mission was a Kamba village that was used by Kamba traders as a resting and re-stocking station by caravans that were bringing goods from all over eastern Africa. At that time the Akamba dominated the coast- to -inland trade and had a network caravan routes traversing eastern Africa that needed courage and skill to utilise. Krapf was interested in establishing missions in inland Kenya, and therefore he befriended a well-known caravan leader known as Kivui wa Mwenda (who historians mistakenly refer to as chief kivoi).
Kivui journeyed with Krapf to one his home which was near the present site of Kitui town. Thus, Krapf became the first European to ‘explore’ this part of East Africa. On the morning of 3rd December 1849, Kivui showed the German a snow-covered mountain whose peaks to the Akamba resembled the beautiful black and white plumes of the male ostrich. “That is Ki-nyaa” Kivui told the astonished Reverend. The Kamba word for the large, wild and flightless ostritch bird is “nyaa”. Krapf reported this mountain in Europe as Kenia. This is the name that was used thereafter to identify the Equator-straddling mountain, and that part of East Africa. The name eventually passed on to the colony and independent republic.
The first pic is Ludwig Kraft and the Rabai mission,2nd pic is a painting by Jack Sullivan 1890 of Kraft and his pack being shown the Ostrich plummage like mountain"kinyaa" at the top of kwa vonza exhibited at butetown art center in Britain,the third pic is the slab at the top of kwa vonza where a wooden cross is also planted there to mark the point to date
The first President of the Republic of Kenya Mzee Jomo Kenyatta and the second President Daniel Toroitich Arap Moi have gone down in history as the two Kenyan Heads of State who wrote using green pens in all their official documents.
The colour came to be associated with the top seat and it was mentioned several times during parliamentary debates to connote the sovereign power of the President.
This practice originated with Mzee Kenyatta after his stay in Britain and the first document he wrote using the green ink was a note to his lawyer after he was arrested in 1952.
The country's founding father is also reported to have used the same ink to cancel the names of his two allies Mbiyu Koinange and Arthur Wanyoike from the parliamentary report on the murder of former powerful MP, the late J. M. Kariuki.
His successor, President Moi continued the tradition to the extent that writing in green ink during the 'Nyayo Era' was tantamount to pretending to be the President.
Historians speculate that State House adopted the colour because it stood out and would easily differentiate an original document and a forgery or a photocopy.
Another country that has adopted the colour for official state communications is India.
In 2007, the nation was thrown into an 18-month-long power struggle within the government after officials in one ministry used green instead of red.Speaking of Kenyatta and British intelligence, one of the things that Jomo picked up during his stay in Britain was using green ink. This is significant, because every subsequent Kenyan president has used green ink in official correspondence and documents. It became so unique that the education system refused (and probably still does) to let students use green ink.
The earliest mention I can find of Jomo using green ink is in the late 1940s as he signed checks and documents. He used it to scribble a note to his lawyers the night he was arrested in 1952. It was also the color he used years later to cancel out names of his close friends, Mbiyu Koinange and Arthur Wanyoike, from the parliamentary report on JM Kariuki. Authentic correspondence from him, before and during his presidency, was always in green ink.
The colour came to be associated with the top seat and it was mentioned several times during parliamentary debates to connote the sovereign power of the President.
This practice originated with Mzee Kenyatta after his stay in Britain and the first document he wrote using the green ink was a note to his lawyer after he was arrested in 1952.
The country's founding father is also reported to have used the same ink to cancel the names of his two allies Mbiyu Koinange and Arthur Wanyoike from the parliamentary report on the murder of former powerful MP, the late J. M. Kariuki.
His successor, President Moi continued the tradition to the extent that writing in green ink during the 'Nyayo Era' was tantamount to pretending to be the President.
Historians speculate that State House adopted the colour because it stood out and would easily differentiate an original document and a forgery or a photocopy.
Another country that has adopted the colour for official state communications is India.
In 2007, the nation was thrown into an 18-month-long power struggle within the government after officials in one ministry used green instead of red.Speaking of Kenyatta and British intelligence, one of the things that Jomo picked up during his stay in Britain was using green ink. This is significant, because every subsequent Kenyan president has used green ink in official correspondence and documents. It became so unique that the education system refused (and probably still does) to let students use green ink.
The earliest mention I can find of Jomo using green ink is in the late 1940s as he signed checks and documents. He used it to scribble a note to his lawyers the night he was arrested in 1952. It was also the color he used years later to cancel out names of his close friends, Mbiyu Koinange and Arthur Wanyoike, from the parliamentary report on JM Kariuki. Authentic correspondence from him, before and during his presidency, was always in green ink.
QuadroK4000
Elder Lister
X-TRAIL
Elder Lister
Hii tumekula viboko zake seriously
Sawa.
Kesho jiandae bumper TBT
Tumbaff
Ashook Leyland niza juzi after the Indians bought the company.
Hii ni Leyland Albion
Kasaman
Elder Lister
Even happy valley !
Kasaman
Elder Lister
Mathace !
It's Me Scumbag
Elder Lister
It's Me Scumbag
Elder Lister
Idi Amin was right...
QuadroK4000
Elder Lister
Ok engine ni Cummins?