The hustler who helped build Nairobi, one block at a time

A photo of the Nairobi railway station in 1916. Abraham Block took a train from Mombasa to Nairobi. Abraham owned The Stanely Hotel, which he bought from its original owner. He also owned several other hotels in Nairobi and Rift Valley. photos | courtesy

The tiny Baltic state of Lithuania is perhaps the last place one would expect to derive the success story of a Kenyan dynasty.

But it is from the wintry climes of this ancient land “spread like a counterpane across the cold plains of northern Europe” that Abraham’s People, a new book, begins an intriguing story that straddles a people’s persecution, an individual’s triumph and the taming of marshland that was to become Kenya’s capital city.

When Abraham Lazarus Block, or simply ALB, arrived in Kenya in 1903, his singular pursuit was to settle in a promised Zionist colony. The dream of the Kenyan Jewish State was never to be, but Abraham — born in 1883 to Samuel and Ettel Block in a small Lithuanian village — ended up building a business empire whose footprints firmly remain in modern-day Kenya.

From the Block Hotels — that once owned facilities as iconic as Nairobi’s Norfolk and New Stanley hotels — to consumer goods manufacturer East African Industries and Farmer’s Choice, the legacy of this Lithuanian Jew who travelled thousands of miles to settle in Kenya at the turn of the last century is enduring.

Author Jane Clare Barsby tells the story of Abraham’s long journey by skillfully interweaving history, biography and fiction.  

Fleeing persecution

Like millions of Jews fleeing persecution, Abraham is smuggled out of his Lithuanian homeland and, after an excruciating journey, finds himself in England.

Surrounded “by black buildings as uneven as rotten teeth”, Abraham arrives in the northern English city of Leeds to live with an aunt. The welcoming scene condenses a life of hardship.

“The door opened. Beyond it lay a narrow scullery with a stone sink and damp-pustuled walls. It led into a small room with only one window. The grate was empty, the floorboards were bare. A length of string ran down the centre of the room; a yellowed blanket was flung over it. From one side of the blanket emerged his cousins, from the other his aunt,” writes the author. 

His first job in England is as a parcel delivery boy, but as a factory worker it hit him that the toiling “was taking him nowhere” and he would never make enough money or marry Rosie Daniels, the woman he has fallen in love with.

That is when he decides to join his father, who had earlier fled from Lithuania to South Africa after the dominant Russians started targeting Jews. Abraham pays for the long ship journey to South Africa by working in the “searing hot hell” of the engine room. He marks his 18th birthday at sea covered in “thick brown grease”. The year is 1901.

He would later fight in the Anglo-Boer War and shear wool for a living after reuniting with his father in South Africa.
But it is a statement by an old friend, as Abraham seeks to buy land in South Africa in 1903, that stirs the idea of the journey northwards to the British colony of Kenya.

“Haven’t you heard? There’s a new Jewish homeland. It’s here, in Africa. They call it the New Zion and there’s land for free for those willing to settle there,” writes the author, re-enacting the statement Eli Levy told Abraham. 

Consequently, Abraham attends a meeting in Cape Town addressed by the British Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain, who advises young Jewish men to relocate to Kenya where land had been preserved to establish a Zionist colony that would solve the “Jewish Problem”.

“Chamberlain explained that he had visited Kenya and had developed great love for the country. He described it as an extraordinary diverse land, where the scenery ranged from the shores of the Indian Ocean to the alpine peaks of Mount Kenya,” the author writes of the British statesman’s speech.

With his fist hitting the lectern to heighten the attraction of the “beautiful” land, Chamberlain describes the “glorious” Kenya-Uganda railway, “perpetual summer” and “cabbages as big as bicycle wheels”.   

It was, he added for the avoidance of doubt, “a place where the Jewish people can prepare to enter into their rightful inheritance like the followers of Moses, who spent 40 years in preparation to settle in the land of Canaan!”

That was all the encouragement Abraham needed. His worldly possessions when he arrived in Kenya or “New Zion” aboard the Feldmarschall – a  German ship that docked in Mombasa — were a couple of Basuto ponies, 20 pounds from his savings, a family gold watch given to him by his father and a kit bag with a few personal belongings. 

Abraham’s arrival aboard the “lunatic express” from Mombasa to Nairobi railway station “that was little more than a large iron hut …with an old clock strung over the door” marks a new page in his life.

“Abraham looked around. Beyond the few horses and carts that were hitched to a rail, there was nothing to be seen. A swamp stretched away into the distance and a few shacks dotted the landscape; it was flat, bare, grey and dolorous,” writes the author.

Disillusioned

In the fast few paces he makes in Nairobi accompanied by Tommy Wood, a newly-found British friend, Abraham realises there is little enthusiasm for the “Jewish homeland” story. Upon passing through a cemetery with some crosses bearing the inscription “killed by lion”, he also learns that a new set of survival skills would be called upon. 

In Abraham’s People, the author opens the chapter on the arrival in Nairobi with a quote from Lord Hindlip in British East Africa Past, Present and Future: “Nairobi is the result of some momentary mental aberration.”

That may sound like the modern-day Kenyan capital with endless traffic snarl-ups, insecurity and a string of vice that come with rapid urbanisation.

But life for the pioneer immigrants like Abraham wasn’t easy. In 1903 Nairobi was a new place; a strange land with stranger people. What is now a thriving city was then just a mere swampland. The promised free land on which a Zionist colony was to be established wasn’t anymore as charming an idea as it was when one first heard of it abroad.

The colonial administration wasn’t necessarily eager to support all new settlers. The Lands Commission officers were less keen about their work, often working with no maps or knowledge of the country’s interior.

Racism thrived with the Europeans opposed to Jewish settlement in Kenya. Money was in short supply.

Establish their roots

But men like Abraham worked hard, used their wit to cut a deal, lived frugal lives, and survived the disappointments of failed crops, dying animals and poor markets. They endlessly tried to beat the odds and establish their roots. 

Abraham was determined to make money and a life for himself in this “mosquito-ridden swamp”.

And this is how he made his first profit. He overheard a conversation about a prime plot of land on sale in Parklands while having breakfast at Tommy’s Victoria Hotel, then a popular meeting point. He walked over to the home of Jeevanjee, the seller, and agreed on a price of 75 pounds.

Abraham paid a speculator’s deposit of 20 pounds – the only money he had – ran after the young men who had been talking about the land and offered to sell it to them for 100 pounds. That was an instant profit of 25 pounds.

The Africans, who are said to have loved giving nicknames, initially called Abraham “The Midget” because he was short. But in later years he acquired the moniker “The prophet” for “his uncanny ability to make money”.

Deal-making became Abraham’s lifelong obsession. He hardly saw an opportunity to make money that he didn’t consider.
Once Abraham’s canny mind saw an opportunity to supply mattresses when the owner of the Stanley Hotel, Mayence Bent, couldn’t get comfortable ones around.

Abraham offered to get them for her yet he had no idea where and how he would procure them. But he was a man who had learned to extract whatever he wanted from his surroundings.

So he borrowed machetes from a shopkeeper, engaged a Mr R.A. da Souza to sew the mattress covers, hired unemployed Africans who used to hang around his friend Tommy’s hotel to cut the grass that grew along the railway line, stuffed the mattresses, sewed up the holes and delivered them to the Stanley.

And that business deal probably established an association with the hotel’s owner, which eventually led to her selling the New Stanley Hotel to Abraham when she retired.

On another occasion, two acquaintances wished to import the fabled Ankole cattle from Uganda. Abraham risked it and travelled to Uganda. He came back with 200 of the long-horned cattle after an adventurous but treacherous trek. From this venture, he made a tidy profit. This was in 1908

Prior to the Uganda venture, Abraham had started trading in cattle, which he bought from the Maasai with the help of Lord Delamere. It is this project that gave birth to Victoria Butchery, Abraham’s first non-farm business in Nairobi.

He would later be involved in selling milk after the First World war. He also sold furniture; supplied the needs of the big-game hunting and safari teams that brought him into proximity with celebrated Hollywood stars; ventured into real estate, tourism and the hotel industry.

All this culminated in “Abraham’s people” – the extended family – being founders and shareholders in major businesses.

Abraham’s name is associated with companies such as the Block Hotels which spread to Lesotho, East Africa Industries, and Block Estates.

In later years, his companies also managed Nyali Beach Hotel, Lake Baringo Hotel, Lake Naivasha Country Club, Keekorok Lodge, Samburu Lodge, Outspan and Treetops hotels.

His business interests

Apart from the hotels, Block Estates was a major landowner around Nairobi and the Rift Valley. Afro-Swiss Engineering and Business Machines Limited was within his stable. Some of the businesses may have changed hands over the years but they remain an everlasting legacy of Abraham’s determination.

The author describes Abraham’s business acumen in the post-First World War period thus: “From some, Abraham would acquire information; to others he would impart it. From some, he would buy; to some he would sell. No deal was beneath his notice, no commodity beyond his scope. No effort was too great; no wait too long. If money was to be made, ALB could smell it, and if a deal were to be had, he would forge it.”

Yet the beginnings were tough. He bought a 640-acre farm in Kiambu, Njuna Farm, and began work on it alone. However, the backbreaking work didn’t yield much in the first year. The author describes it as a “lonely and dispiriting existence.

Of his neighbours, few ever visited and Abraham was left with nothing to do but collect odd nails and straighten them for future use, and whittle bits of wood into spoon. He lived on potatoes and beans; and he began to wonder if he had made a serious mistake of coming to Kenya.”

Indeed Abraham eventually was about to leave the farm and go back to South Africa after “the price of potatoes collapsed” and “nobody wanted to buy” his peas. It is Lord Delamere who convinced him otherwise and loaned him oxen for ploughing and dairy cows. Abraham worked hard, made a profit and repaid his debts.

His fortunes improved and in 1908 he invited his father and sister, then living in Johannesburg, to join him. With the extra hands on the farm, Abraham became fully involved in stock trading – buying cattle from the Maasai and selling them. Later this business nearly ruined him when he imported a herd of infected cows.  

Abraham now deemed himself a rich man but there were too few marriageable women around. In 1914 he married Sarah, an “imported” woman, who was a sister to his friend David Tulipman. But she was his third choice love – the first, Rosie Daniels, preferred the more assuring life in Leeds, and the second — Sarah’s younger sister, Rachel — couldn’t be married until Sarah got a husband.

Love and friendship would thrive later in life, underwriting a successful marital and business partnership. He is cast as deferring to her all the time, preferring to respond to her decisions about furnishing the house, selection of schools for the children, choice of partners and even investment decisions.

However, Sarah would never have imagined the hardships of Nairobi life early in her marriage. When she arrived in Kenya she was taken to Abraham’s first farm and home in Kiambu. To add to the difficulties was a disapproving mother-in-law and sister-in-law.

Family life

And when Rita, her first daughter, developed jaundice, Sarah had to travel all the way to Kampala, Uganda, where the nearest paediatrician was based.

All this time the husband was away fighting the Germans on the border between Kenya and Tanganyika. Sarah and Abraham had four children: Rita was born in 1915, Jack in 1916, Eddie in 1919 and Ruth in 1927.

To the end of his life, Abraham remained steadfast in his convictions that “time was money”, believed in Horace’s urging — “labour diligently to increase your property”— and was committed to the welfare of his family for whom he built a home, chose good schools and colleges, and helped in getting wives and husbands.

Abraham retired from his businesses in 1958, leaving them in the able hands of his sons. He died on April 18, 1965. Sarah outlived him, dying on Christmas eve of 1980, having spent her last years in a cottage in Norfolk Hotel. 

When Abraham’s People is launched on February 26 at the Fairmont Norfolk Hotel, it will be another step in an enduring personal journey that echoes Kenya’s history in the last century. 

Abraham’s People can be found at Text Book Centre, Book Stop, Banana Box, The Souk (Karen) and Safari Kit (Fairview Hotel).