Harris’ African Adventure

The Lunatic Express

The ever-reliable Karanja picked us up in Karen before dawn. Our destination: the new and mighty Nairobi railway terminus. We arrived via unlikely back streets, red-earthed and pot-holed – which perhaps made the station seem even more enormous and shiny when we bounced round a corner and suddenly arrived. The station is Chinese planned and paid for, just eight years ago. But our route to Mombasa is much older. As soon as we knew we would be spending time in Kenya, this was the trip I wanted to do the most. 

The railway was the reason my grandfather was born in Nairobi in January 1922: his father was an engineer who spent decades working on it. But more than family interest, this is famously the “railway that built a nation” – or, as its 19thC detractors dubbed it, (and certainly our boys’ preference): the Lunatic Express. 

Starting in Mombasa in 1896, the railway inched its way across 650 unforgiving miles, finally reaching Lake Victoria in 1901. It was hailed as an extraordinary feat of human endurance as well as engineering. But it was also controversial and costly, both financially and in terms of human life. Churchill, who rode the line in 1907, declared it was a testament to the British ability of “muddling through…through everything—through the forests, through the ravines, through troops of marauding lions, through famine, through war, through five years of excoriating Parliamentary debate”. 

Part of the row was about it’s purpose: why spend millions building a railway across a hot, diseased wasteland that didn’t even belong to Britain? The answer was pushed by anti-slavery campaigners who were determined to stamp out the Arab-Swahili trade that still flourished in East Africa. But the argument that won the day was made during the Scramble for Africa by imperial strategists who argued that Britain needed to control the headwaters of the Nile to protect the Suez Canal and the critical trade route to India. After years of rows and resistance, the Uganda Railway was eventually given the go-ahead. Thousands of Indian coolies were recruited for their experience and impressive work ethic but even they struggled; as many as 3,000 died during construction.

The railway and its challenges started attracting a global following, particularly when it reached the Tsavo River in 1899 and the camps were besieged by a man-eating lions. This deadly and fearless pair repeatedly snatched labourers from their tents at night; more than 100 died. Night after night, the lions out-witted railway authorities and famed game hunters who tried to shoot them. A District Commissioner took up position one night with some bait and his gun. Unfortunately he fell asleep and the lions took both him and the bait. The lions were eventually shot – they can still be visited now, in the Chicago Field Museum.

The railway was finally completed – though it was really only the first phase. Another generation of engineers, like my great-grandfather, were recruited to sort out permanent bridges and viaducts to replace routes that had been temporarily thrown up, and also to stake out new branch lines in Kenya and Uganda to boost East African trade.

A century-and-a-bit on from then, us Harrises clutched our tickets at Nairobi. We said goodbye to Karanja and put ourselves in the brilliant hands of Edwin the porter. He guided us, and our mountain of luggage, through various stages of security and checks and onto the train, with a promise that his porter friend in Mombasa would meet us the other end. 

We squeezed into our carriage that was otherwise filled with a trip of school girls. They were immaculately behaved, quietly stealing glances at our rowdy boys, but otherwise sleeping on their arms or watching out of the windows. And what a feast: as the train swept through Tsavo National Park, we saw zebras, giraffes, elephants, impala and even an ostrich. There were red-dusty farms with cows and sheep; great muddy rivers; great empty plains stretching out for miles; collections of houses and dwellings and old railway villages. The boys yelled with delight and amazement when they spotted the wildlife and wrote long lists of everything they’d seen. The journey was six hours; we had chicken sandwiches and cokes and the boys marched up and down the train – then came scuttling back having met a gun-wielding security guard. 

All too soon we reached Mombasa – another huge terminus, hot and humid. But there indeed was Edwin’s porter friend to meet us on the platform and delivered us to Karanja’s friend, Brighton, who was ready to drive us on the next leg of our adventure: three hours up the coast to Watamu.