Old Eldoret

   Sometimes we can’t fit everything onto the pages of Old Africa magazine. L S van Aardt, who was born in Eldoret in 1924, sent us a letter chronicling his memories of his youth. We produced an edited version in our February-March magazine. Here’s the complete version. Enjoy. Shel Arensen, Editor

Early Days in East Africa

by L S van Aardt

Eldoret or “Sixty Four” was built on a slope. Main Street was wide enough for a wagon with a team of sixteen oxen to turn. Only Europeans owned shops on the main street, which was flanked with sanitary lanes housing bucket latrines. Indian labourers, nicknamed churas or frogs by the Lumbwa, emptied the buckets at night. Some Indians owned shops adjoining Main Street, with the remaining shopkeepers on the road out to Soy, known as the Indian Bazaar. Further along was the Native Location.

Shops in Main Street consisted of a general dealer’s establishment, owned by Captain J. Macnab Mundell, who boasted he could get you anything from a pin to an elephant. There were two banks, Standard and the National Bank of India, the latter a three-story building with the only lift in town. I remember a chemist, Howse and McGeorge, a bakery owned by a Mr. Duncan, a Ford agency owned and run by T. J. O’Shea, a doctor’s Surgery reputed to be haunted, the Miss Bartons’ tea room, Gailey and Roberts, a butchery owned by George Bryant, Ethridge’s printing press, a florist (name forgotten), Whiteaway and Laidlaw, drapers, C. Edison Egleton, a workshop owner and a Post Office with an Indian Postmaster. George Bryant who was always half seas over, would come into town every morning and buy up all the flowers and present them to Miss Ethridge who he was madly in love with. She could not stand him and returned the flowers to the florists as soon as poor George left the shop. Wilson ran a high-class grocery and stocked the most delightful imported sweets.

  In the Indian street Juma Haji supplied the school with bread, Bhogal Brothers had a shop and Ambram, a shoe maker, charged ten shillings for a pair of hand made shoes. We often visited a soft drinks manufacturer, with his most popular drink being a sickly sweet one Called “Love O.”

  A farmer known as Rooi Piet on account of his flaming red hair used to come to town once a month or so on horseback to shop and collect his mail. There were no post boxes. Mail was sorted into cubbyholes and kept behind the counter. I was in town one morning when Rooi Piet rode up and demanded his mail. The Postmaster said he should come in and collect it, whereupon Piet, still mounted, rode in and attempted to jump the counter. After that, the Postmaster would be waiting, mail in hand, as soon as he saw Piet approaching. After collecting his mail he would adjourn to the Pioneer Hotel where he would drink steadily for a week, before being helped home by two African men who accompanied him for that very purpose. They ran beside the horse propping him so he stayed in the saddle.

  People parked flush on Main Street and as the model Ts had poor brakes drivers had to place a stone in front of a wheel to stop the car from rolling. The street became so littered with stones that the police issued a warning to motorists to remove their stones when leaving or face prosecution. 

  Suiker Vlei was so named because a wagon loaded with sugar once got stuck there and all the sugar melted.

  Mrs. Ortleppe owned the farm on which Eldoret town was built. She started the first cinema and a skating rink. The first film shown was King Kong and they strongly advised people with weak hearts to stay at home.  Both buildings burnt down shortly after the showing. Mrs. Ortleppe always dressed well and never went out without her parasol.

  My father’s cousin Willie built the first buildings in town using wattle and daub and corrugated iron. He used one-cent pieces for washers since they were cheaper than the real ones.

  The first European to be hung in Kenya was a youth called Ross. I was at the Eldoret European school with him. Later he murdered two young girls on Menengai, threw one into the Crater and left the other on the rim. He refused to tell where the body of the first one was and The Kenya Regiment and the Police searched for days before finding her. The hangman, who had to carry out the execution, owned a restaurant outside Nairobi, which I used to frequent. He delighted in insulting his clients, but he did serve very good food. 

 The headmaster of the Eldoret European school was Mr. Hunter, a very strict disciplinarian. I had many a beating from him. While at school, Pagel’s Circus arrived in Eldoret from South Africa. The entrance fee for children was only fifty cents. Not having such a large sum I sneaked in but was caught, given a beating and then let in for free!

Pagel's circus strongman 

  I watched a strong man who could lift an elephant and three horses placed on a hinged platform. A Wall of Death, clowns and trapeze artists entertained the town.

  A rugby team from Stellenbosch University visited Eldoret with a youthful Danie Craven on the team.

   Danie Craven

The Sparrows farmed just outside town and when they died their son Bert presented the wagon they used on their trek from South Africa to the Town Council, who placed it in front of the newly built Town Hall. At independence they asked him to remove it. He transported it to the Norfolk in Nairobi, where it still stands. The first mayor after independence was Joseph, previously employed by the chemist. He took over from J. Wolstan Beard.

  After the war I joined the Tanganyika Agricultural Department but was seconded to the Kenya Government to do locust control in the Northern Frontier District. I spent the most blissful time of my life stationed at Garissa. Abundant game covered the area. Since water was scarce, the game lived mostly near the Tana River or around a seasonal water hole at Kolbio on the Somaliland Border. The D.C. and one Policeman ran the boma. The former, Symes Thompson, used to smuggle in Joffes gin from Somaliland, which he sold to the policeman and I for five shillings a bottle. When his request for money to build a swimming pool was refused, he instructed the policeman to arrest some well-known scoundrels and made them dig a suitable hole. He bought materials using money from the “Goat Bag.”

  On completion of my term of duty I was posted to Dodoma. I was required to do at least 14-day foot safaris around the district and was allowed 14 porters who were paid fifty cents per day. The lunatic asylum was run by a Dr. Foley, who after a disagreement with the government migrated to America. I was friendly with a male nurse at the hospital. He was an ex pro golfer who was eventually locked up himself as he too went round the bend. Unkind people said it was because of him trying to teach me to play golf. I used to visit him once a week in the asylum and there met a couple of cricketers. One insisted on standing behind the stumps when batting. The other one was convinced he was a piece of toast. When fielding he sat on a piece of three-ply, which had been painted to resemble a piece of toast. There was also a Greek-owned hotel, which held weekly poker games. Fortunes were won and lost; one gentleman even staked his wife and lost. Whether the winner claimed his prize I do not know. During the 1945/46 famine I spent most of my time on famine relief.

 When my ex-Company Commander offered me a job with the Wattle Company in Eldoret, I accepted. After a while I was seconded to the CDC who had taken over the Wattle Company’s Estates in Njombe. Here I met my wife-to-be Elsie. Jack Mustle, an ex-elephant man from Burma, was MD. When the Japanese invaded Burma, his wife walked with two small children from the Chinwin River to Imphal in India, a distance of some 1000 miles.

  Karl Lautenbach had started a sanservieria rope factory in Tanganyika. At the start of WW2 he was interned and sent to South Africa. On his release he started a rope factory at Soy. Later he sold his farm to L.A. Johnston and moved to Belgium Congo. L.A. Johnston used to frequent the Central Lounge in Eldoret. I never heard him utter more than two words – smoke when he wanted a cigar and – drink when the barman would pour him a double tot of whisky. As a youth he worked on the Klondike in Alaska carrying buckets of water to the local brothels and was paid a dollar per bucket. He was reputed to have saved more money than the miners. He discovered gold in Kakamega.

 In I think 1976 the following news item appeared in the E.A. Standard: FOUR ESCAPE IN TIGONI PLANE CRASH “A pilot, Mr. N.S.Pearse and three passengers narrowly escaped death when their light aircraft crashed into a farm near Tigoni in Limuru after engine failure. The aircraft belonging to The East African Tanning Extract Co of Eldoret and bearing Reg. No. SYAGO was flying from Eldoret to Wilson Airport when it crashed on Limuru Dairy and Pyrethrum Co-operative farm at 9.30 a.m. All the occupants escaped unhurt. Names of the passengers were not given." I can tell you the passengers were the MD of the Company, my daughter Sally and myself.