Taita; the Switzerland of Kenya

What a beautiful way to celebrate the International Childrens book day – 2nd April 2025

My dad used to say Taita is the Switzerland of Kenya! He should have known given his love of geography and his friendship with the Irish Holy Ghost fathers who were also his teachers. Lately I have been trying to figure out what it is they saw, my father and his teachers, and that sent me to books, the first one I laid my hands on was the ebook version of a popular children’s novel Heidi that was written in 1881 by Jonathan Spyri.

Children novels can be so much fun for their simplicity and the mental expeditions they take us through. As I read the book I could not stop thinking about Aisango, my grandmother. What kept playing in my mind as I bounced up and down the Swiss alps with Heidi is one of my granny’s favourite folktales.

She was fond of the story of a girl with a severe physical deformity who was detested by her siblings. When they got an invitation to visit a relative in a distant land they did not want her to accompany them. The poor girl insisted on going along though she could not keep pace as the party struggled to shake her of.

In the dead of the night the host kept visiting the room where the children slept, each time he paid them a visit he would inquire if any of the children was still awake. The girl with the deformity could not fall asleep, her insomnia probably brought on by the psychologically and physically draining day she had had. Each time she would announce that she was still awake and the host would enquire in anger who was it that hadn’t slept yet, to which the girl would respond;

“Ni ini moni mwindi kirudusu, mkono kirudusu, iriso kirudusu, kudu kirudusu ( it is me of the deformed leg, deformed hand, deformed eye and deformed ear).”

After a number of these visits her intuition told her the man was up to no good, so she woke her siblings up and organised their safe escape. As these tales normally end the man inflicts the harm he intended on the visitors on his own children since to disguise their escape the children ask the host’s children to take up their place.

I do not remember ever being told what the takeaway from this story was meant to be. My grandmother would leave her stories open ended letting you mull over the tale and pick up what spoke to you most in the tale for yourself. Nor can I tell now whatever grand inspiration I took away from the story each time it was recited to me by Aisango.

However, it took Heidi, the story of the Swiss orphaned girl who brings so much good to every life she touches with her simplicity and love even in her misfortunes to bring to my attention the fact that the little girl in my grandmother’s story introduced herself by her deformity. She had so internalised her disability that it became her name and her way of describing herself.

It is the kindness of her heart though, her ability to overlook the hatred of her siblings towards her that has always endeared her and the story every time I contemplate it in my adult life. In addition, it is unwise to mistreat anyone. You never know who will save you from impeding disaster or who would come to your aid in your hour of need.

I listened to Aisango’s story at the same impressionable age when I was hearing my dad’s assertion that Taita is the Switzerland of Kenya. Since at that age whatever your father said was gospel truth, I figured that he knew it all, besides his teachers had probably overflown the entire Taita expanse and figured that there were indeed geographic features in Taita that resembleed those of Switzerland! Did you know there was a Bishop who to cover his diocese in Kenya, he had to use a helicopter, that is how vast an expanse he covered!

As a child it fascinated me endlessly to imagine that my motherland could be compared to a first world country. I would imagine that one day very soon (soon and very soon we are going to be just that way*2) Taita and Kenya in general would have leap frogged into the latest developed country. Roads and infrastructure so meticulously designed, its beautiful forests and grasslands well tended you fell in love with it instantly and was filled with rapturous dreams of golden bliss.

Lo and behold, the leaps and bounds seem to have taken a detour, are lost deep in the savannah grasslands of Tsavo and are trying to figure out how to eventually reach their intended destination. Meanwhile I have disabused myself of the childhood naivety on which these childish, but not impossible dreams were anchored.

I am now more alive to the fact that there is plenty of work that needs doing. I have not lost the dream though! As I bounce along with Heidi I realise, geographic features aside, there are many more ways my motherland compares to the Switzerland of Heidi. Who knows maybe in fact this is precisely the reason the statement was made.

Neighbours love poking fun at each other and that applies to neighbouring communities in hilly Taita. As I grew up I heard all manner of jokes about neighbouring villages. As fate would have it I landed myself in neighbouring Mghange Dawida where I heard an interesting story about wamrughua, the people from Mrughua where I hail from.

In days of yore when Wamrughua travelled back home from Mombasa, the tale went, they would trudge along with sacks full of bread to distribute to their relatives! That is precisely what Heidi did when she left Frankfurt to her Swiss Alps homeland! She carried lots of bread for her grandmother.

Beyond neighbours’ poking fun at each other there is something beautiful in this attribute! It speaks of the innate desire of my people to share good things with those you who are dearest to them. It speaks of brotherly and sisterly affection. A love and connection so deep that at least every once in a year you desire to go back home and see your people and carry gifts for them, bread if that is all you can afford.

And as you visit home you rediscover and take in the picturesque hills, the refreshing cool misty air up in the hills, the clear streams, colourful sunrises and sunsets combined with a warm hearted friendly people. The old men grew their own tobacco, dried and ground it into snuff and whiled away time in the evening telling stories and smoking their pipes (kiko) which they carried in their vikuchu (hand crafted leather bags).

Meanwhile the cows, goats and sheep grazed happily on the hillside. From these animals the Taita people would get milk for their beloved hot morning cup of tea, make ghee, cheese (kikowio) and natural yoghurt (maziwa lala) as a relish for their ugali or mix with porridge. You have never tasted tastier porridge or broken maize steamed with homemade ghee.

Those are the many similarities I have drawn between the hills of Taita and Heidi’s Swiss Alps! That I have loved to share with you on this day when we celebrate International Children’s Book Day. A day celebrated annualy on 2nd of April to coincide with the birthday of Danish author Hans Christian Anderson a prolific writer of fairy tales.