Happy Valley stories, disputed Ndabibi farm, and the continuation of white and black mischief

Jimi Wanjigi stirred the hornet’s nest this week when he tried to recover Ndabibi farm, which – according to local MP Jayne Kihara – is now ‘owned’ by President William Ruto. The President has neither confirmed nor denied this. As Thomas More said in his 14th-Century maxim, “Qui tacet consentiret” , meaning “silence means consent”.

This is not the first time that Ndabibi will be in the news. It has always been a sight of struggle ever since it was grabbed from the Maasai by white settlers as they tried to create their own spaces of privilege and where the hoi polloi, the subalterns, were locked out. History is sadly repeating itself.  Of all the owners of Ndabibi, Gilbert Colville is the best remembered for wanting to be Kenya’s leading cattle rancher.  He had also been given a concession of 256,000 acres in Maralal and Laikipia, where he had grabbed and fenced the watering sites. In total, he had a herd of more than 20,000.

Colville was the man who started the Kenya Meat Commission, thanks to the cattle ranching experiment that had started at Ndabibi Ranch. Although he was appointed the first chairman of KMC, colonial settlers did not like how he dressed. As chairman of KMC, he was always supposed to attend board meetings: “His shabby appearance – a rather dirty bush shirt and trousers, no tie and no socks – caused raised eyebrows among his tidier colleagues,” one settler noted.

It seems that Ndabibi has always tested people’s appetite for land acquisition. There is a story told about Colville in those colonial days, that a lady had asked him to part with some of the land. You have so much, Gilbert,’ she said. ‘You would never even notice.’ Gilbert then retorted, ‘That’s what the burglar said!’ He wouldn’t give up the land that had become part of his identity. Why Gilbert was so mean to that lady is not clear. I was recently reading Elspeth Huxley’s Out in the Midday Sun: My Kenya and stumbled on a possible answer: “Colville avoided women and took no part in Muthaiga’s revels. Austere in habit, he did not smoke and touched no alcohol, Maasai snuff, raw and strong seemed to be his only indulgence,” wrote Huxley.

Touted as one of the wealthiest men in Kenya, Colville, unlike other settlers, decided to shed his image and masquerade as a poor Maasai. The locals had nicknamed him Nyasore – which meant a lean man. Although he was exploiting them and had grabbed their land, he had this band of warriors accompanying him to hunt.  “When he was hunting, he would go all day with only an egg and a cup of tea in his stomach,” one of his employees said. Huxley also observed: “He was a great hunter, especially of lions, and kept a pack of mongrel dogs who bayed the quarry until Colville came up and shot it. He could be as hard on his dogs as on his men. One of his managers recalls seeing him draw his pistol and shoot a dog that misbehaved during a lion hunt. To protect himself from thorns, he wore a jacket and trousers made from the skins of antelopes he had shot and cured himself.”

Ndabibi was a signature ranch. Initially 40,000 acres, the adjacent settlers, most of them conservationists, did not like Colville’s hatred of wild animals. He loved setting fires on his ranch and watching it consume thousands of acres, scaring away the wildlife.

In Ndabibi, he experimented with the hardy Zebu cattle after abandoning the idea of importing pedigree bulls. He then built one of the largest herds of beef cattle and was the colony’s supplier. While he would survive on a thin budget, he was also intriguing. “Like many rich people, he would swallow a camel and strain at a gnat. He would buy an expensive tractor without a second thought but quibble at the cost of half a dozen pangas,” one of the managers observed.

There is another piece of history in Ndabibi that is connected to Happy Valley’s stories.  Those who remember the shooting of Nairobi’s number one Casanova, Lord Errol, after he had left Muthaiga, recall that the man who was arrested and charged was Sir Delves Broughton, whose wife was named Diana, who had an affair with Lord Errol.

But after Sir Broughton was acquitted of the murder, he left for England and committed suicide. Diana was devastated: She had lost a husband, Sir Broughton, and a lover, Lord Errol. In Muthaiga, most of the folks eluded her.

Left homeless, unhappy and with few friends, the Ndabibi man would come to her rescue. Colville is said to have written to Diana to express his sympathy. “In a gesture which seemed quite out of character, he bought for her a mansion on the shores of Lake Naivasha” – in what is today Oserian Farm. “She was a beautiful woman, elegantly dressed, fond of jewels, sophisticated, chic - a far cry from Maasai manyattas, lion hunts and cattle yards,” wrote Elspeth Huxley on this unique association.

Diana, 25 years younger, married Colville, and they stayed together for 12 years. They had an adopted daughter. But Diana fell in love with her neighbour, Tom Delamere, and they married. Though Diana divorced Colville, the trio of Tom, Diana, and Colville would together attend horse race events, and when Colville died in 1966, he left most of Ndabibi’s wealth to Diana. More so, Tom and Diana would spend days with Colville at the Oserian house he had bought for Diana.

Another story about Colville and Ndabibi was that during the State of Emergency in which white settlers were threatened with death by Mau Mau freedom fighters, the settlers were never amused that Ndabibi had become a hideout. One District Commissioner was quoted lamenting that “Ndabibi was absolutely crawling with very subversive fellows. The moment we pinned something on them (Colville) hired an expensive lawyer (AR Kapila) in Nairobi who got them acquitted.”

It would then not be surprising to hear that story of Colville allocating land to his African workers and asking them to register a limited liability company to secure the land.

But fast-forward to the days of Jomo Kenyatta, part of this estate was acquired by Agriculture Development Corporation. The land was ideal for ranching and farming.  That was until Benjamin Kipkulei, a former honcho in the Nyayo regime claimed to have acquired the Ndabibi land – including the parcels owned by Ndabithi Farmers.

Kipkulei, before the court told him off, had this cock-and-bull story of how he “acquired” the land from 2007 to 2014 from several personalities who had been allocated various plots by the Agricultural Development Corporation. He could not produce the agreements or any paperwork. It was also unclear how the ADC farm changed hands.

While many Kipkuleis claim to have bought the land from ADC, the case of Ndabithi was interesting in that they had been given it by Colville. Adding President Ruto to that mix, where poor farmers organised as Mwana Mwireri Farmers Company, Ndabithi Farmers Society, and New Matanya are among the claimants, adds a new twist.

Ndabibi is going to be a site of struggle between the poor farmers and the wielders of power. Jayne Kihara’s likes say President Ruto bought the land from Kipkulei – who had lost the ownership battle in court. It seems we have not heard the last of Ndabibi - and it is no longer a happy valley.

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