In the year 1909, I was then farming with my dad in the Free State. After a few years of bad luck, my dad decided to emigrate to East Africa. From Newcastle, we took the train to Durban. Having a fair amount of sheep and ten good horses, which we intended taking with us, we managed to get berths on a German cargo boat which had been chartered by a number of families also going to Kenya.
After twenty-eight days at sea we eventually arrived at Mombasa. From there we took the train to Nairobi. Having had a look around the District, we decided to journey further up country, taking the train from Nairobi to a little station 250 miles away called Londiani. The town consisted of a small station hotel and several Indian dukas. (Duka is Swahili for shop.) There, we were told we would have to travel 75 miles by ox wagon to get to what is called the Uasin Gishu Plateau.
We immediately set about buying some oxen and getting them trained. After three weeks everything was in readiness and we left Londiani with two wagons and teams, there being no roads, only tracks left by other pioneers. The road being through dense cedar and bamboo forest with occasional open spaces, we could only do three to four miles a day. Temporary bridges had to be made over small rivers and camp had to be made early every afternoon.
As the country was teeming with lions, temporary scharms had to be made at every camp for oxen, horses and sheep, with huge fires going all round this all night. This is the best lion scare, or lanterns stuck up on poles.
There was a tribe of natives called the Wanderobo who used to roam around the bushes and shoot the oxen with poisoned arrows. After the camp was shifted they would come along and gather the meat.
After being two months on the road we eventually sighted the Plateau, miles and miles of open, rolling country surrounded by forest and mountains on all sides. We trekked across the plains for several days until we at last selected a spot for a farm and homestead.
We took two farms, 30 miles apart. Land at that time could be had from the Government at 1d. (One penny) per acre. We decided then to go in for mixed farming and were successful for about five years. Then East Coast Fever broke out and cleaned out nearly the whole District. Red Water disease hit the sheep and they died off by the dozen. The horses, which were doing fine, contacted lymphangitis, which is caused by ticks, and they all had to eventually be destroyed.
We then went in for maize and wheat, which was doing particularly well in the District, but that was not a great success as the plains were teeming with game of all descriptions. We had to have night herd boys around the lands all night. Herds of sixty and seventy elephants used to pass with 200 yards of our house, trekking from one reserve to the other almost daily. Lions could be heard and seen daily.
After nineteen years of not too successful farming we again sold out and went to Rhodesia, much to my regret, as I do not think the scenery of the Kenya Highland can be beaten by any in Africa.
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