” My father worked with EARC up to 1976 in stations Nakuru, Mombasa, Changamwe and Makindu.. It is very sad if you see the state of the railway infrastructure now. “
Between 2012 and 2016, founder Chao Tayiana Maina embarked on a one of a kind journey to document Kenya’s railway stations that were at risk of demolition and severe dilapidation. Although no longer in use, the stations held in their cracks and crevices the stories of millions of Kenyans who depended heavily on the railway before its decline.
These photos showcase a journey across the country to document the obvious, the elusive, the tangible and the intangible.
In the 1890’s, Nandi chief Koitalel Arap Samoei and Kamba prophetess Syokimau predicted the coming of the Uganda railway, as did many leaders from different communities around Kenya. Their predictions served to warn their people that a foreign object, a fire spitting iron snake would slither through their lands and completely disrupt life, as they had known it. And they were right.
Built as a strategic endeavour by the British to keep the Germans from reaching the coveted source of the Nile in Uganda, the total cost of the railway was immense. 32,000 labourers imported from India, 2,500 lives lost, and 5 million pounds spent. Commenced in 1896, the journey from the Ocean (Mombasa) to the Lake (Kisumu) was fraught with natural disasters, unimaginable obstacles and innumerable challenges, famously earning it the name ‘The Lunatic Line’. By the time of its completion the Uganda Railway, as it was first known, was one of the greatest structural feats
undertaken in East Africa.
3 years, 50+ Railway Stations, 1000+ photographs
As a Kenyan, I am deeply intrigued by the story of this railway, the memories it holds, the pain it conjures and the healing it represents. When you look at the physical infrastructure of the ‘old’ railway today, you see significant gaps. In some parts, large portions of the track have been removed and sold for scrap metal while some of the stations have been demolished. But perhaps what is more striking than the gaps we can see are those that we cannot, and these are significant gaps in the narrative.
‘Save The Railway’ started as a project to document buildings but a couple of months in, I realised that this story was much more than that. The missing narratives weren’t about the structures – they were about the people. In both pre- and post-independence Kenya.
Where were these stories of life, joy, aspiration, love and pain, 100 years after the man-eating lions? Where were the stories of the men and women in post- independence Kenya who built this country; of the thousands of Mau Mau detainees who were transported to different detention camps around the country in a special train called ‘gari ya waya’? So named, because the windows were lined with grills and barbed wire to prevent detainees from escaping during transit. Were these stories not part of the railway, and do they not deserve to be heard?
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