One day someone will write THE book about perhaps the most devastating pandemic to ever hit East Africa. No, not Covid or even the 1918 flu, but the twin rinderpest and smallpox epidemics that hit around 1889-1892.

Ka-u? Ka-uzi.

Just to illustrate, the smallpox epidemic decimated the Maasai (some reports are that up to two thirds of the Maasai were wiped out). The smallpox epidemic also devastated the Southern Gĩkũyũ, who were forced to evacuate modern-day Kiambu, and both from present-day Nairobi.

At the same time, rinderpest, which had been introduced by the Italians through Abyssinia, and southwards into the rest of East Africa, destroyed Maasai herds. Out of 4,500,000 head of cattle in the region, only 450,000 were left. 90% of the economy wiped out.

@Owaahh says that the resulting famine may be what led to lowered immunity among the Maasai, thus the susceptibility to the imminent smallpox epidemic was increased. So not only were cattle dropping dead, but so were people, in absolutely horrifying numbers.

So as both smallpox and rinderpest ripped through the Maasai and Southern Gĩkũyũ, killing people and livestock in their millions, the old ways of coping were not available. In prior times, whenever famine or disease stalked the land, the Maasai would shelter their women...

...and children with the Gĩkũyũ, and vice versa. And by the traditions of the time, these would become fully-fledged members of the community. Do you know anyone named Wamaitha? That is a Maasai expatriate into Gĩkũyũland. The fact that both were hammered at the same time...

...took away that insurance policy. Now overlay on all that the invasion by Europeans. Had they tried to invade the highlands of Kenya even twenty years before, they would have met some impressive resistance from at least the Maasai.

Remember that the Oloiboni Mpatiany ole Supeet had died in 1890, triggering a vicious civil war due to the rivalry between his sons and putative heirs Olonana and Senteu (a story with eerie echoes of the Isaac/ Jacob/ Esau one in the Old Testament) just as the epidemics landed.

Of course, with Gatling guns and support from the metropolis, the white man would probably have prevailed, but it may have been a pyrrhic victory (à la over the Mau Mau sixty years later), or they may never have looked at present-day Kenya as a possible settler colony.

Don’t forget that Kenya was never in their plans. The idea was Egypt and the Suez Canal, for which they thought that they must secure the headwaters of the Nile, thus Uganda. The Lunatic Express was simply a way to get to Uganda.

But on their way, their covetous colonial eye caught the beauty of the Kenyan highlands, and thus they changed their strategy - invite their people to colonise the place and begin an agricultural economy to pay for the railway and protectorate.

Could an impenetrable Maasai legion have made them think twice? Not necessarily to keep the white man out (the avariciousness after the Berlin Conference was too strong), but perhaps to have a light-touch protectorate colony à la Tanganyika?

This would obviously have fundamentally changed Kenyan history, but the thing with alternate histories is you’ll just never be sure. But it remains a fact that the twin epidemics are the most significant in Kenyan history, and yes, someone should write a book on them.

Postscript: the rinderpest epidemic continued on its southward journey, devastating the herds of the Shona and Ndebele. The officials of the Cape Colony insisted on killing both diseased and healthy animals, devastating the economies of the two communities...

...and thus triggering the First Chimurenga. I hate to recommend a Wilbur Smith novel, but he captures it very well (if exceedingly cinematically) in the Ballantyne series (especially ‘The Angels Weep’).

Postscript 2: this entire unplanned ka-uzi on a Wednesday evening was triggered by Mwalimu @Wamagaisa’s thread on the tragic fate of Prince Njube, son of King Lobengula, and his abduction by Cecil Rhodes in the 1890s. Look it up.