A view of the road from the valley.
Searching for Margaret’s tomb stone sends us on a wild goose chase on Mount Margaret, or as the Maasai call it, ‘Ol-Morijoi’, where the poison arrow tree (Acokanthera oppositifolia) grows.
Legend has it that “Mt Margaret was blown off Mt Longonot,” jokes Sante ole Poise, the spokesperson for the Ilparakwo Environment and Forest Conservation Group.
I had always thought that the hill near the satellite earth station between Maai Mahiu and Narok was named after Princess Margaret’s (Queen Elizabeth’s flamboyant late sister) royal visit to Kenya in 1956.
However, Shel Arensen of Old Africa magazine sets the record straight: it was named by Bowker, an early settler from South Africa who owned the land near present-day Maai Mahiu. Margaret was his daughter.
It’s another world in Kedong Valley – pristine yet so unbelievably close to Nairobi at only 80 kilometres along the lower escarpment road from Nairobi to Maai Mahiu.
It’s peaceful in Kedong Valley – named after the palm-like plant (Ol-ekidong in Maa -Dracaena kedongensis). But the Kedong massacre of November 26, 1895, is a well-documented affair that happened at the base of Mount Margaret.
A caravan of 1,100 men – Swahili and Kikuyu – had been dispatched by the colonial authority to carry food supplies from Fort Smith to Eldama Ravine.
The trip went well but on the return journey the Swahili headman lost control of his young porters.
The porters entered a manyatta, leading to a fight in which most of the Swahili and more than 400 Kikuyu were killed. Skeletons lay scattered around Mount Margaret, cleaned by the vultures, and Kedong Valley became infamous as the ‘Valley of Death’. More than a century later, there’s nothing left of the massacre.
Four cottages are laid out at the base of the towering hills. After a super home cooked meal by Peter Njenga, who trained in Canada on an exchange programme with Kenvo, we take a siesta. In the evening, we take a leisurely walk around the Maasai homesteads.
Active days
The following days are active. For one, there’s Mount Margaret to scale. So, after a hearty breakfast, we make for Maggie’s mountain about 10 kilometres from the camp, stopping at an old stone bridge built over a gorge by the Italian prisoners of war who also built the nativity church on the Kijabe road during WW2.
We could have driven past the stone quarries but Firoz Dharani is fascinated by the skill of the artisans who work with bare hands to mine the stones. Without realising it, we spend more than an hour at the quarry.
“See how they fill the holes in the stones with plastic paper for traction when they hammer in the nails,” Firoz points out. “They know exactly where the grain line is,” he continues as we watch Mureithi separate a gigantic boulder using only a steel bar.
We follow the road as far up as it goes and stop at another gaping hole where quarry workers are busy. At this rate it seems there may be no Mount Margaret left in a few years.
Nobody knows where Margaret’s grave is. So we walk along the mountaintop enjoying the fresh air and views, scaling the peaks at different corners. Then we stumble upon a tombstone.
Thinking we’ve found Margaret, we read the inscription. It’s in memory of W Russel Bowker, FRCS, who died July 16, 1916. His death anniversary is four years short of a century. The tombstone is from East London, South Africa.
The mine-men then tell us of a spot on the towering peak above Bowker where they think Margaret’s tombstone could be. We hike over the boulders and past the thorn trees, aloes and poison arrow trees and at the top, we find a dug out hole. Could it have been the elusive Margaret’s final resting place?
Apparently not, for Arensen thinks she was never buried up there.
By RUPI MANGAT
