January

The Uganda Railway, once dubbed the “lunatic line” because of the high cost of building it, both in terms of money and human life, linked Uganda and Kenya to the Indian Ocean. Between 1895 and 1902, the British colonists recruited several thousand Indian indentured laborers from different parts of India to work on the railway line.

Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs sailed in small dhows and ships from Bombay and Karachi to Mombasa. The railway ran 576 miles northwest from Mombasa, through a semi-desert to highlands rising up to 10,000 ft. on the equator and down to the bed of the Great Rift Valley, before reaching Lake Victoria.

The skilled carpenters, blacksmiths and masons were quick to adapt themselves to the specialized requirements of the railways and many became fitters, turners and boiler-makers. This enterprise was costly, as a large number of workers perished from malaria and other diseases and fell prey to the man-eating lions of Tsavo.

A high percentage of the contracted laborers stayed on. Excluded from the British Colonial government and farming, they straddled the middle economy, prospering and succeeding in a multitude of professions and businesses and forming the backbone of modern East Africa.