Kenyatta once lived in this compound

Kenya’s founding father was a reluctant tenant in this house as a half-free and half-chained freedom fighter

By WAGA ODONGO
Posted  Wednesday, May 18 2011 at 18:00

In Summary

• When a house serves as a cross-breed between prison and freedom for a future president, it drips with history and nostalgia. WAGA ODONGO visited Kenyatta House in Maralal

Kenyatta House is a testament to the endurance and workmanship of British colonial architecture. The British were the master builders of this or any other age.

From Bahamas to Burma, visible testament to British architectural ingenuity and effectiveness still stands tall, years after the empire was reduced to covering only Scotland and Wales.

Kenyatta House is functional and with no fripperies. You will not adore the décor. It wasn’t meant to be the governor’s mansion, but a home for a mid-level civil servant — a very ambitious mid-level civil servant with dreams of one day occupying the governor’s mansion.

The house has a tiny verandah, as with all colonial designs, and square edges without a curve in sight.

The piece of history sits on a highly raised foundation from the ground level to reduce incidences of snakes and other undesirable critters from the surrounding bush slithering in. This, I learn from my guide.

Inside is a large portrait slightly askew over the long disused fireplace. The eyes in the portrait follow you around the room, large and piercing, and, underneath, a small sign with the words “His Excellency, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta” stands out.

Looking at his portrait, I realise that, with time, the title ‘Mzee’ amalgamated with his other names and actually became his first name. It was an honorific for his age and achievements, like Mahatma was for Mohandas Gandhi. It feels almost treasonous to call him by his names without Mzee — with a capital ‘M’ — affixed to it.

Right next to the portrait is a collection box, reminding you that, although entrance is free, your contribution to the upkeep of the museum is much appreciated. Maralal, you see, doesn’t get that much traffic, and imposing a toll gate would make the numbers making pilgrimage here dwindle to a trickle.

The house was built with the specific intention of housing Mzee Jomo Kenyatta after his stay in Lodwar, a place which he had described as hell on earth. It was a halfway house between freedom and imprisonment (he was allowed visitors). In Lodwar, access to him was cynically controlled, and he had to report to the DC every day.

Mzee was free to walk around with his Somali bodyguard to the town downhill and interact with locals and shop from his government allowance. He wasn’t allowed, however, to ride in a car without the permission of the colonial government.

Representatives of the world, settlers and politicians came along to see him while he was in this house, mostly to get reassurance that their interests would be safeguarded in an independent Kenya.

This is because, in 1961, everyone knew that an independent Kenya was inevitable, and that its fate would be intertwined with that of Kenyatta.

The future president would address journalists from all over the world from here in 1961. It was the first time he had done so since his imprisonment in 1953.

Here in Maralal, he chaired a meeting between rivals Kadu and Kanu. The political parties were split on many things, and probably only agreed on the primacy of Kenyatta in Kenyan politics.

The house has three rooms, with three photos of Kenyatta in and around Maralal town in the sitting room, low-hung.

Outside the house, one has a great view of the surrounding hills, and the area has been fenced off as a museum should.

What this house misses in its role as museum is, I feel, a bust. A portrait isn’t good enough; I could see a portrait of him every time I open my wallet.

The house needs, perhaps, a copy of one of Kenyatta’s notebooks — or personal books — on a proper glass display, which I am sure the heirs of his vast estate would provide joyfully. This would enable you to feel the man’s presence, more so since this house lacks any sort of assorted paraphernalia related to him.

It could borrow from Nelson Mandela’s house in Soweto, where you find his trekking boots, rain coats, bed, and books and so on.
In the kitchen was my first encounter with a wood-powered stove, complete with a grilling, baking and roasting compartment.

The curious contraption had a funnel built from it, joining the main fireplace. This ingenious modification saves on money because it removes the need for a dual-purpose chimney (I found out that a while back while buying materials to construct one. Fire-proof cement and firebricks are very expensive).

Kenyatta House has featured regularly on debates on the floor of Parliament. At first, the government was taken to task for ignoring the piece of national heritage.

It was said to have let the house revert to the hands of a civil servant who was running it down and, in 1973, the minister for Natural Resources Odongo Omamo said that he was taking measures to ensure the houses were turned into museums.

In 1995, the government allocated funds for its renovation, but then withdrew the money in a supplementary appropriation Bill. MPs again asked the government why this was so.

A decade later in 2007, the government finally got round to doing something about the house. Simon Lesirma (then Samburu West MP) complained that it was reducing the land available for grazing for the people of Maralal.

Simply put, the MP complained when the government did nothing and then complained further when the government started doing something.

Lesirma voiced a laughable idea. Since Maralal is all open fields, there is no shortage of grazing lands and the acreage wasn’t being increased to Delameric proportions, but a mere 28.5 acres.

Later on the MP, noticing that his query was not undergirded with the intellectual rigour that the august house requires, changed tack and sought assurance that the land shall not be used for private development.

The idea was to block “external investors” from setting up business around the house at the expense of the small traders in the sleepy town.

Eventually, the minister in charge promised no competing businesses would be set up around the house.

Once a freeman, Kenyatta later moved on to his other house in Gatundu, also built by the government.