Of lions, Jews and a golden city called 64

How can you kill a lion that’s not there? we used to tease a close friend of ours at Kenyatta University, who bore the “lion-killer” name, Bargentuny.

She was probably a relative of the venerable (now departed) elder, after whom the famous Bargentuny Plaza in Eldoret was named. But it was ridiculous to imagine a lion roaming and roaring around Eldoré, the “golden city” of the 1990s, as the residents fondly called it.

But then, Eldoret is a city immersed in surprises. In Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye’s novel, A Farm Called Kishinev, a Jewish Highlands settler narrates to his child: “There wasn’t always a town called Eldoret — just a spot on the map called 64.”

In Macgoye’s inimitable style, the novel encapsulates some mind-boggling events that sucked Kenya into the vortex of world history.

The farm motif, for example, alludes to a curious offer by European leaders at the beginning of the 20th century to create a “homeland”, an Israel, for persecuted Jews from Eastern Europe in what is today Uasin Gishu and Trans Nzoia counties!

The Jewish exploratory mission declined the offer, after encountering an array of flora and fauna, including a few lions that were not quite germane to the one of Judah, according to local lore.

Despite the failure of the mission, however, some few Jewish families did settle in the area. In any case, it was invaded, soon after the First World War, by the “pioneering” British and South African settlers, who turned it into a bastion of the White Highlands.

My recall of Hill School last week set me wondering about the magnetic magic of this part of the country that bonds people to it with such fierce passion. I can’t claim a love affair here, but I can admit to a continuous flirtation with the “Eldoré” wonder of these heights.

“We were very lucky that the settlers here didn’t dig in and fight for this land as long as they did in South Africa,” I told my Ghanaian friend and colleague, Prof Nana Wilson-Tagoe, in April 1986.

We were sitting on a road bank somewhere between Timboroa and Equator during a leg-stretching break on our way from that Lodwar tour that I was delighted to learn our colleague and former Know Kenya Club chairman, Raphael Wanjohi, remembered, too.

Fabulous view

The point we were at is one of the highest in Kenya, and it commands a fabulous view of some of the loveliest farmland in this country, the “golden” green to the south and southwest of where we sat.

Looking back now, I realise that what I said to Nana Wilson-Tagoe was not quite accurate. It was more than luck that drove the settlers out of the Highlands.

Kenyans fought for their land, and that fight could not be dismissed as a simple ethnic disturbance, as many of us were quick to remind the late historian William Ochieng’.

With regard to my flirtation with Eldoret and its environs, I realise it dates back to 1967, when on a Dar es Salaam-Kampala trek, our OTC bus broke down at just about the same spot as we had our break from Lodwar.

We loitered there for several hours, gazing at the expanse of emerald hills and valleys spangled with herds of sheep. Since then, I have been returning to Eldoret on various errands, and collecting a mixed bag of poignant memories.

I told you about the tennis coaching tours, and my friend “Mayor” Joseph Lesiew recently reminded me of my having coached his children, who became much better players than I.

Then came the mid-1980s and Moi University, and word went round that I had relocated to the Eldoret Campus.

Surprised me

This surprised me, as I never even applied to join, much as I was fascinated by the idea of a new public university.

I guess the assumption arose from the fact that several of my friends and academic “age mates” in the then-middle ranks of the University of Nairobi (of which Kenyatta was still a college) did move over to Moi. Among these were Peter Amuka, George Godia, and Everett Standa, who was to return to us later as Vice-Chancellor of Kenyatta.

But it’s also possible that several of my friends knew of my secret fascination with Eldoret, and assumed that I would seize the opportunity of a residence there. Maybe I hesitated because I was beginning to dream of returning to Makerere after the Idi Amin terror.

Anyway, it was inevitable that I would have close links with the language and literature scholars of Moi, especially as even the then-young academics there, like Wegesa Busolo, Joyce Nyairo and Adera Ogude (who later moved to Witwatersrand), had worked or studied with me at some time or other in Nairobi.

My saddest memories of Eldoret, apart from the dark days of the PEV insanity, are the losses of three young colleagues whom I held in very high regard. The principal of Chepkoilel Secondary School, who perished in a road accident with several members of his family, shortly after hosting us to a very successful Drama Festival Nationals, was one of them.

The Moi University linguist, Stephen Lubega, who also met his death in a motor accident near Kipkabus, was another. Lubega was not only a countryman and clansman, but also a former student of mine at Makerere.

Both poet and language expert, he was the quintessence of what I think a literature, language and linguistics (LLL) scholar should be.

My most recent and painful loss from Eldoret was that of Naomi Shitemi, the Swahilist and my close colleague on the Women Writing Africa project, who succumbed to cancer. I last met Naomi in Germany, in 2009.

I fondly remember her jocular but deeply touching insistence then that “this man is a Kenyan”, when I was introduced as a Ugandan at a meeting of scholars.

I will soon try and honour an invitation to Eldoret from some of my most avid readers. Oops! I should have told my editor first. This Eldoré magic!

Prof Bukenya is one of the leading scholars of English and literature in East Africa.