OUT&ABOUT: A treasure trove of history
Colonel Stoneham's collection of wildlife found in the area at Kitale Museum. PHOTO | RUPI MANGAT
What you need to know:
In 1924, The Stoneham Museum was opened showcasing creatures that the ordinary likes of me might never see in the wild.
I’m at Kitale Museum that houses his collection of things like the potto, the pangolin, flying squirrel and insects including butterflies that are increasingly rare.
The Maasai used to call it Ol Doinyo Ilgoon (Breast Mountain), which morphed into Mt Elgon. It looms over Kitale town. By a stretch of imagination, the Maasai saw its shape as that of a woman’s breast.
Our first stop is at Kitale Golf Club under the modern bypass that takes you to Kakamega Rainforest and further to Lake Victoria. We’ve driven in from Eldama Ravine that is one of the most picturesque roads through a patch of dense highland forest and the red-orange flowers of the Erythrina abyssinica splashed under the bluest of skies.
This was once an infamous route as slave traders marched chained slaves from the heart of Africa through Uganda.
One of the stops on the slave route was the present day Kitale Club, founded in 1924, and the golf course opened in 1926. For years there was an iron bar where the slaves were shackled before they were marched through Eldama Ravine and to the Coast to be shipped out.
Kitale — or Quitale as it was known then — became a much-favoured European settlement after the 1920s when the British army arrived to settle after World War 2. It was wild, with buffaloes and lions roaming everywhere. The Maasai grazed their cattle there.
One of the settlers was Colonel Hugh Stoneham. He was a Second World War veteran.
“He was a bit of a recluse,” recalls Richard Barnley, who was born and bred in Kitale. He recalls as a child meeting the Colonel. Stoneham settled in Kitale and continued with his collection of all things wild and wonderful, which according to one account, he had begun as a five-year-old.
FASCINATING
Surrounded by the 24 million-year-old Elgon, the long range of Cheranganis and the fascinating Kakamega Rainforest, Stoneham had found his Mecca.
In 1924, The Stoneham Museum was opened showcasing creatures that the ordinary likes of me might never see in the wild. I’m at Kitale Museum that houses his collection of things like the potto, the pangolin, flying squirrel and insects including butterflies that are increasingly rare.
On the high walls inside the present museum that was built with funds he willed to the government (including his collection and a small public library) are animals that roamed Quitale such as buffaloes, hartebeest and dainty oribi that is the logo of the neighbouring golf club — but it’s no longer there.
Reading a travel blog by Hilary Munro, she writes — ‘In 1919, my grandfather came as a young Assistant District Commissioner, in a cart drawn by oxen from Londiani, 100 miles away (160km). It took him three weeks … there being only a track through it (present day Kitale) … No buildings or life at all except innumerable game.’
Things moved fast from then, with Kitale on the track to urbanisation. In 1926, the train line opened and in 1928, the Prince of Wales came to a regimental dinner and dance for Armistice Day, staying two nights in a special train.
Stepping out of the museum, we’re on the nature trail, with a stream flowing through it — unfortunately it’s smelly with trash flowing in it. We crossing over many rickety bridges. As a matter of fact, the trail needs some work.
Outside, Kitale is busy with traffic, and people, and the old colonial architecture replaced by modern high-rise buildings.
Another fascinating private museum is Treasures of Africa by John Wilson, a Scotsman, who arrived in Uganda in 1949. Now in his 90s, he’s still at work. The rich collection is of everything about the Karimojong in Uganda who are Nilotic and related to the Turkana. They share a common border with Kenya’s Mt Elgon and Pokot area. His plant collection is equally fascinating, with many described by him for the first time like Caralluma wilsonii and the Aloe wilsonii, including the rare and endemic Aloe elgonica that he discovered on Mount Elgon.
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Fact File
Nairobi to Kitale is 400 KM on a good tarmac road.
While there, visit Saiwa Swamp National Park on the Kitale-Lodwar road. For accommodation you can camp on the beautiful grounds of Saiwa Swamp National Park or at the Barnleys Guest House.
