How Nairobi estates acquired their names – PART 1
From its leafy suburbs to the informal settlements, it is surprising how Nairobi’s estates derived their identity from white settlers or a corruption of names that were used by the Maasai community before the advent of colonialism.
An accidental beneficiary of the construction of the Kenya-Uganda railway by the British colonial government, the names given to various parts of the town were never envisaged as permanent labels and were often purely functional.
What started off as one name sometimes became twisted or lost in translation. But soon, as the town’s population grew, so did the names stick till the post-independence era
Here are some of them.
1. Roysambu – Roysambu is a estate located along the Thika Superhighway. It was known as Royal Suburbs during the colonial times. However this morphed to Roy-Sabu and eventually got the current name Roysambu.
2. Kariakor – During the first World War, a contingent of Kenyan soldiers served in the British army as luggage carriers. The Carrier Corps, as they were known, carried everything the soldiers needed to survive during the East African campaign of the war.
Their base in Nairobi was around the present day Kariakor area. The name Carrier Corps eventually got twisted and ended up as Kariakor by which it is known today.
3. Donholm – Though now a residential area, Donholm was previously a dairy farm known still as Donholm Estate, and named after Glasgow’s Donholm Estate where its previous owner, J.K. Watson hailed from.
Mr J.K. Watson was a farmer, but very little is known about him. Libraries have since discarded his pictures and mementos.
What is known however is that he helped in the construction of early churches in East Africa, the most notable being the Namirembe Hill Church in Uganda.
The former Donholm Constituency (Watson’s Farm) was once represented by Mwai Kibaki, before it was renamed as Bahati. Donholm Road was also renamed as Jogoo Road shortly after independence.
4. Kibra – Kibra is a word from the Nubian tribe that means ‘forest’. The area acquired the name by virtue of its initial proximity to the Ngong forest.
At the end of the World War I, the British Government gazetted over 4000 acres of land in the area as a military reserve for decommissioned Nubian soldiers who had given military service to the colonial government.
The first Nubian settlement in the area was around 1904.
The Nubians of Kibra are among the earliest African residents of what eventually became Nairobi City.
Apart from service as soldiers in the King’s African Rifles, Nubians were some of the first employees of the Kenya Bus Service in the 1930’s and also worked in the Kenya Police.
After Independence, one of the most prominent Nubians was Yunus Ali, who became the first Nubian Member of Parliament, (there hasn’t been another Nubian in such a high position ever since).
Today, there still are names in the area that denote the time when the Nubian population formed the majority Kibra.
Laini Saba means ‘firing range’, the location of a shooting range used by the King’s African Rifles during the two World Wars.
Toi, where Toi market is presently located, means open space.
5. Zimmerman – Tim Zimmermann was a German taxidermist (the art of stuffing and mounting the skins of dead animals in lifelike form) who had followed the trail of big game hunters to east Africa, the largest big game attraction in the world.
Originally, according to some records, Zimmermann or Bwana Simama to his workers, had come to research for a German University. He fell in love with Kenya and started Zimmermann’s Limited (Taxidermy) in 1929.
By then, Kenya boasted the largest game safaris in the world, attracting hunters including former US President Theodore Roosevelt.
The famous Ahmed, the Marsabit elephant, at the Nairobi National Museum was done at Zimmermann’s.
Zimmermann Ltd rose to become the second largest taxidermy company in the World, which until 1977, was located on the plains of Kamiti. It was pushed out of business after Kenya banned hunting in 1977.
