Maseno School: The giant that started beneath gum trees

When John Hanning Speke “discovered” Lake Victoria as the source of the River Nile on July 30, 1858, the region surrounding the lake immediately assumed strategic importance for the British.

The first Europeans to move into the region, then known as Buganda, were missionaries from the Protestant, Church Missionary Society, arriving in 1877, followed by the Catholic, French White Fathers Society in 1879. They found a well structured kingdom ruled by a Kabaka. The missionaries started by teaching religion, reading, writing and numeracy, initially from their houses.