Eldoret’s Wagon Hotel and the Boma Inn show town’s vibrance

I  think it would be fun to write a book called “What If?”.

I know what the topic for Kenya would be: what would have happened to Kenya – to Africa – if the Zionist Movement in 1903 had accepted the offer by the British Government to settle on the Uasin Gishu plateau?

Imagine the impact if the Israeli homeland had been established here instead of Palestine!

I thought about this last weekend when I drove to Eldoret. When you have climbed the western wall of the Rift Valley and passed through Londiani, Timboroa and Nabkoi, you can well imagine how the first European settlers looked at these cool and wooded highlands and were stimulated to recreate the kind of farms they had left back home.

I once asked Sir Michael Blundell, a revered farmer and politician in Kenya, to relive the scene when, as a young Englishman, he arrived by boat to Mombasa and then travelled by train to Eldoret in 1925:

NEW ENGLAND

“As we came out of the top of the Mau and into Burnt Forest, all the newcomers, like myself, peered out and looked at this wonder. We were travelling through the then absolutely unspoilt forest. The long grey lichen hung from the cedar trees, and colobus monkeys jumped to and fro. We were looking out of the windows, very excited. Many were planning to take new farms and grow wheat at this higher altitude, where it is cooler and more suitable for white people. They felt they were building a new country. They were grafting onto a slab of Africa a New England”.

In the main, however, it was Afrikaners, whites from South Africa, who first made the wheat and cattle farms of Uasin Gishu. Most of them left the country, I think, at Independence.       

I was staying at the Eldoret Wagon Hotel, which was built in those early colonial times. It is in the middle of town, at the junction of Elgeyo Road and Oloo Street and tucked behind the much more modern and monolithic Sirikwa Hotel.

On previous visits – the last time must have been about a dozen years ago – I had stayed in the Sirikwa. But I am glad I decided to have a change.

A brochure on Eldoret Wagon describes the hotel as “reliable and affordable”. Affordable it certainly is, at Sh2,500 for a single room, bed and breakfast. Reliable...? Well, I have no reason to think otherwise. The power stayed on, the taps did not run dry, the hot water in the shower was instant ... But there is much more to the Eldoret Wagon than that.

The old building is bungalow style. It has a terrace bar and the dining room has a ceiling with a barrel curve that you would have seen on the canvas-covered ox-wagons that the Boer farmers introduced to Uasin Gishu. To prove the point, there is a large painting of such a wagon on the end wall of the dining room.

SEISMIC LIVE MUSIC

Most of Eldoret Wagon’s 102 bedrooms are in a new and separate block. They are not elegant, but with en-suite bathrooms and TV, they are comfortable enough and, at the said price, they are certainly good value.

There are a number of other facilities: the Jambo Casino, the Sesia Club, the Endo Bar, and Foxy’s Pool Bar (I neglected to find out who Foxy was, but I am sure no ancestor of mine lived and drank in these parts).

My young colleague Oscar and I did visit the Jambo Casino. Oscar was keen to have his first flutter at the tables. I would have been happy to demonstrate that the only winners in casinos are those who manage them, but the only game I know is pontoon, and those tables were not operating that evening.

We, therefore, moved to the Sesia Club, where the music of the live band was seismic. But, after some time, our ears adjusted and we began to enjoy the selection of Lingala tunes plus, especially, the local numbers.

It took time, too, for the club’s clients to arrive but, after 10.30p.m., the place was comfortably occupied – with dancers as well as drinkers and nyama choma eaters.

SERVICE AT A PRICE

Oh yes, I should have mentioned that after our dinner at the Wagon, we drove over for a drink and a look at the Boma Inn – the hotel in Elgon View off Ramogi Drive that opened only last October.

Like the hotel of the same name off Mombasa Road in Nairobi, it is managed by the Kenya Red Cross. It is just as elegant in its contemporary decor and sophisticated in its service.

This comes at a price, of course: the rack rate for residents is Sh12,650 for a single room, bed and breakfast.

So we visited Eldoret’s oldest and its newest hotel and we experienced a little how the town has become a much bigger and more vibrant place than it was the dozen or so years ago when I was last there.