Authored by Keith Ang’ana
As we all know, Nairobi was initially a swampy area before the arrival of the colonialists. And if you’re
Keen enough, when travelling on Waiyaki Way, you’ll notice that all the roads on either side end up
either in ascents or descents within a few metres (e.g., Ring-Road Kileleshwa, James Gichuru Road,
Redhill-Link Road, etc. This is because the whole area is hilly. Westlands was also a hill, known as the
Kirungii Hill back then.
Having covered two streets in the Nairobi CBD, we decided to visit Westlands for our March Sketch
Tour. Westlands is currently rivalling the Nairobi CBD in terms of development, but how did it start?
The origin of Waiyaki Way
In April 1892, the Imperial British East African Company sent an expedition team to Kabete to construct
a fort. Led by Major Eric Smith, they constructed a new fort, just a few miles from where Captain
Frederick Lugard had built his fort and named it Fort Smith.
The British occupants of this fort were so hostile to the locals, and so much bad blood brewed between the two groups. On 14 th August 1892, the British had made plans to raid the village of Riuki in Githunguri, butChief Waiyaki wa Hinga got wind of the plans, and so he stormed into the fort to cause chaos.
The soldiers manning the fort overpowered him and hit him in the head. He was then chained on the
neck to a flagpost outside the fort for the night, and then the next day, he was tried in a makeshift court
and sentenced to deportation to Mombasa.
He was handed over as a prisoner to a Coast-bound caravan, which followed a cattle track from Kabete
and passed through the Nairobi swamp on its way to Mombasa. When the caravan got to Kibwezi on 6 th September 1892, his head wounds had gotten so bad that he was left in the mission hospital to die.
In 1896, the colonial government tasked Civil Engineer George Whitehouse to build the Kenya-Uganda
railway, and when he got to the Nairobi swamp in 1899, he designed it to follow the cattle track that
had earlier been used by Waiyaki from Kabete. This track passed the foot of the Kirungii Hill.
At the time, the original road from Nairobi to Busia was the current Naivasha Road (in Dagoretti), thanks
to an ox-cart track designed by William Mackinnon and Captain Sclater in 1890.
The project left Nairobi within the same year, and so merchants started moving in. The first person to
Construct a house close to Kirungii Hill was Colonel Ewart Grogan, who, after finding South Africa
unfavourable to him, came to Kenya in 1904 and bought 113 acres of land in a wooded area that was
surrounded by two rivers, the River Kirichwa and the River Nairobi.
He commissioned London architect H.O. Creswell and a firm of local Indian contractors to build his
home, which he aptly named “Chiromo” after the village in Malawi where he almost died after
volunteering as a soldier during the Second Matebele War in 1896. Chiromo means ‘joining of the
streams’.
When it rained, the Nairobi CBD became muddy, and so Grogan suggested that the city be moved to
Kirungi Hill. Well, wherever he is, he must be smiling now that the modern-day Kirungi Hill (Westlands) is a CBD in itself.
The architect built a proper stone house, but Grogan never resided in the house due to his adventurous
lifestyle. Therefore, in 1910, he sold it to American businessman William Northrup McMillan, after
whom the McMillan Library in town is named.
William McMillan and his wife, Lucie McMillan, gladly moved in, but it wasn’t long before Lucie started
complaining about sleepless nights; the reason being, the train would loudly bellow at night when passing next to their home, and this was even made worse by the fact that there was a watering point where the train would stop just before taking the Kirungi Hill climb.
Therefore, McMillan had the railway route re-aligned and exchanged with the road route. Hence, the
The railway line was taken to Dagoretti, while the official road to Western Kenya now became the cattle
track that Waiyaki walked on, eventually being named Waiyaki Way.
That went on to show how powerful McMillan was, that he would have the national railway route
moved just because his wife complained. Lucie McMillan eventually died in 1957, and the house was
donated to the government in 1958, and lies in the present-day University of Nairobi Chiromo Campus,
housing the Institute for African Studies.
Westlands
In the 1940s, the British demarcated the area known as Parklands as a residential area for civil
servants. At the time, most of these civil servants were Kenyan Asians of Indian descent. Within a
decade, Parklands became very congested, and so the people kept moving westwards, till they got to
Waiyaki Way, and this area became known as Westlands.
To start us off, we made sketches of The Mall and the One Africa building, with Nyambura winning this
round with the most realistic sketches.
Waiyaki Way fig tree
In 2019, China Road and Bridge Corporation successfully won the tender to construct the Nairobi
Expressway. Within a year, all 2,500 trees along the road, among them 13 rare species, were felled. The
list would’ve read 14 rare species, if it weren’t for the efforts of some environmental support groups
such as Daima Coalition on Green Spaces, as well as the Wangari Maathai Foundation.
At the forefront was one Elizabeth Wathuti, who was the Head of Campaigns at the former organisation.
Through their activism, they were able to save the fig tree at Mpaka Road from being cut. The reason for the respect of this fig tree is that it is more than 100 years old. That makes it one of the oldest trees in Nairobi.
In 2020, the NMS even took it upon themselves to adopt and take care of the tree. When CRBC were
Constructing the Museum Hill exit from Westlands, they erected a barrier right next to the tree, and now
It’s only accessible from Mpaka Road. On weekdays, some matatus park under it, but on weekends, like
During our Sketch Tour, it was unoccupied, and so we lay under its shade for a while as one of us, Ruth,
sketched the tree from a distance, and Master Okello climbed up.
Sarit Centre
On the morning of 24 th February 1965, Pio Gama Pinto was preparing to take his daughter to school. He had just opened the gate to take the car out of the driveway when he was shot at close range and died.
This happened right outside their house in Westlands, and so, that particular road was named in his
honour, as Pio Gama Pinto Road.
Living on the lower Kabete Road, just behind Pinto’s house, were two businessmen, Mr Vidhu Shah and
Mr Manelklal Rughani. The former owned a bookshop in Murang’a, while the latter owned a bookshop in
Karatina. One of their neighbours, His Holiness Sat Guru Pujya Hariram Bapa, advised them that they
should merge their businesses and shift operations to Nairobi.
Therefore, in the same year that Pio Gama Pinto died, the Shah and Rughani joint business was born as
Text Book Centre on Kijabe Street. The business grew substantially, and in 1973, the neighbour once
again advised the two to buy the neighbourhood in which they were currently living and establish their
retail store there.
In 1976, Rughani visited London and got to see the Brent Cross Shopping Mall, whose architectural
design impressed him, and so he sought to replicate it in Kenya. Therefore, after consultations with
Shah, they decided to construct a shopping mall on the land they owned on Lower Kabete Road.
Construction works began in 1981, and several investors, seeing the opportunity that lay
ahead, booked some of the stalls in advance. However, due to the attempted coup in the following year,
resulting in insecurity among the Asian community, most of the investors pulled out.
Therefore, when the mall was finally opened in the year 1983 as Sarit Centre, it only had two tenants.
Text Book Centre and Uchumi Supermarkets. It was only at the end of 1984 that other tenants moved in,
and they did so in droves to the point that it was fully occupied within the same year.
In the year 1994, it was Shah’s time to go on benchmarking tours, and this time, he found himself in
Singapore. There, he was able to see the versatility of different malls. When he came back to Kenya, he
commenced the construction of Phase II of the mall. This involved the addition of a food-court, cinema
and gym.
In 2017, Sarit Centre started construction of Phase III, and this was primarily retail. Sarit Centre has
gone on to uphold its status as one of the biggest malls in Kenya, hence the tagline ‘A city within a city’.
Street kid joins us
As I was explaining about the Sarit Centre while standing next to the gate on Lower Kabete Road, a street kid joined in and listened keenly. I thought I had won over an extra soul, but once I was done, he got to begging us all for money. One of us, Bantu Mwaura, dismissed him by saying that we were struggling artists and had nothing in our pockets.
The street kid then borrowed Bantu’s sketching tools and told Bantu to dare him to draw anything.
Bantu, looking around for the simplest thing, told him to draw the city clock on the Ring Road
roundabout. Within a minute, the kid was done and had even traced the advertisements on the clock.
Challenged by the kid, Bantu now dared him to draw 9 West. The kid, without sitting down or breaking a
sweat, drew the building as if he were the original architect. Then he went on to sign off as ‘Zombie’, but
Bantu encouraged him to drop that pseudonym and go by his real name, after which he signed off as
‘Marto’. We were all impressed by his artistic skills, and we now went on to give him the little we had. I really wished I could get him an artistic job that could get him out of the streets because he clearly had talent.
Once we were done with this part, we took a walk inside the Sarit Centre to experience the feeling
of getting lost by going in through one gate and leaving through the other, on an entirely different road.
After that, we had completed our Sketch Tour and went our separate ways, having learned the history
of Westlands.
To join us on our next Sketch Tour, make sure to follow us on our socials as ‘Qwani’ so that you may be
aware of the date.
