Heritage

Rift Valley Academy rises from Naivasha land plea rejection

delamare

The African Inland Mission (AIM) traces its roots to the work of Peter Cameron Scott (1867-1896), a Scottish-American missionary who served two years in the Congo before medical care forced him back to Britain in 1892.

It was while recuperating that he developed the idea of establishing missions stretching from the southeast coast of Africa to the interior’s Lake Chad. Unable to interest any churches (including his own), Scott managed to convince some friends in Philadelphia and together formed the Philadelphia Missionary Council in 1895 headed by Rev Charles Hurlburt.

The first mission party of AIM consisted of Scott, his sister Margaret, Frederick W Kriegler (GMS) and five others, arriving in Mombasa in October 1895. After spending 17 days there, the party travelled inland by caravan to Nzawi in Ukambani where they established the first mission station. Three others were opened in quick succession at Sakai, Kilungu and Kangundo.

Unfortunately, tragedy struck when Scott fell ill and died of malaria, complicated by blackwater fever in December 1896. Kriegler took charge in an acting capacity but was unable to hold the mission together and it almost ground to a halt tottering under heavy debt to suppliers.

Kriegler resigned from AIM in 1898. The other missionaries either died of disease or went back to America owing to the harsh environment.

The council was determined that missionary work in Africa must continue and began taking more responsibility, appointing Hurlburt director of the mission. Hurlburt and his family arrived in Kenya at the end of 1901.

While searching for suitable headquarters for the AIM mission in Kenya, Machakos was rejected because of its 15-mile distance from the railway, amounting to a whole day’s travel by bullock cart and its affinity to tropical diseases. Hurlburt took a trip up and down the railway line in search of an ideal location for a permanent mission headquarters. Convinced that he had found the right spot, Hurlburt stepped off the train among the green grasses and acacia-lined shores of Lake Naivasha. By the time he arrived at Naivasha and met with the colonial administrator, it was late in the afternoon; and while his request for a land grant was met with approval by the colonial officer, because of the late hour, it was decided that the 99-year lease would be formalised in the morning.

Unbeknownst to Hurlburt, the newly arrived Lord Delamere was also in Naivasha that day and he joined the colonial officer for several drinks that evening in the course of which the matter of the Naivasha land came up. Delamere was disgusted to hear that such prime land was going to be “wasted” on missionaries and immediately suggested that he should be given the land instead. With that, the long-standing Delamere Dairies was born.

Hurlburt returned the next morning only to be told that the land had been given to somebody else the night before! He was forced to settle for a second choice, a flat clearing half way up the escarpment known as Olkijabe (hill of the cold wind in Maasai) or Kijabe. Notwithstanding Hurlburt’s disappointment at having been outfoxed on the Naivasha land, Kijabe had all the attributes that he desired; proximity to the railway line, a central location and at 7,200 feet Kijabe was above the malaria belt and was moderately cool in contrast to the suffocating heat down in the valley.

AIM was a fiercely evangelical movement heavily influenced by the teachings of D.L. Moody who stated amongst other things that “there must be subordination of all other concerns…… to soul-saving and practical Christianity”.

However, the missionaries knew they also had a duty to educate their children. In the absence of education facilities for their children, the missionaries were faced with the choice of abandoning their calling and going back to America or staying and apparently compromising their parental responsibility.

Hurlburt himself had five children and by 1906 there was at least one other family at Kijabe, and several families at other mission stations with school-going children. He quickly realised that a school was vital for the future of the mission.

During Hurlburt’s furlough in 1905, he was invited to the Whitehouse where he and president Theodore Roosevelt met for several hours leaving each man with a high regard for the other. Hurlburt mentioned the subject of a school for missionary children in the meeting which was noted.

He also met Josephine Hope, a Montessori teacher, whom he asked to come to Kenya to teach his children. Miss Hope agreed to the unusual request and came to Kenya. In 1906, the Rift Valley Academy was born in a rudimentary structure accommodating 10 children at most. Initially both African and Missionary children were taught in the same school but following different curricular within a divided room.

A wealthy gentleman donated a large sum of money in 1908 in the name of his stepmother Mrs Butterworth, to be used in the construction of a new school.

Miss Hope drew up ambitious plans to include classrooms, dormitories, a kitchen, dining commons and a library.

Although the school experienced severe difficulties over the years finding tutors for missionary children rather than African children, today it is at par with other high cost institutions.