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Childhood on a Settler Farm: Growing Up in the Shadow of Power

 My childhood began on land that did not belong to us. It was in Sergoit, on a vast, mechanized farm owned by the Kruger family, Boer settlers who had made Kenya their home decades earlier. By the time I was born, the rhythms of the farm were already established: who owned, who worked, who decided, and who obeyed. My father was a laborer there.  We lived in what were called  kambis,  clusters of workers’ houses spread across the farm: Kabao, Soin, Kambi Ya Juu, and Kaprison. Each had rows of small, closely spaced houses, built not for comfort, but for function. Our first home in Kabao was a single-room brick structure near the school, exposed to the harsh winds that swept down from Sergoit Hill. At night, the wind could tear at the iron sheets, and my father would place stones on the roof to hold it down, an act that felt both ordinary and symbolic of how fragile our place there was. The farm was not just where we lived. It defined how we lived. Work, movement, even ...
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Rev. M. P. Loubser (1876–1947): Settler Pastor and Foundational Figure in the Origins of Reformed Work in Eldoret

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Rev. Marthinus Petrus Loubser was born in 1876 in the Cape Colony, South Africa, and ordained in the Dutch Reformed Church within the Afrikaner Reformed tradition. His life and ministry must be understood within the wider historical movement that followed the Anglo Boer War, when many Afrikaners migrated to British East Africa in search of land, autonomy, and the preservation of their religious and cultural identity. Loubser was part of this migration and arrived in the Eldoret region in the early twentieth century, where he would become a central figure in the emerging settler church. Rev. Loubser. Photo: Europeans in East Africa By the 1920s, Afrikaner settlers in the Uasin Gishu Plateau had established the Vergenoeg congregation, a name that reflected both geographical distance and a conscious separation from British colonial influence. Loubser was called as its first permanent minister and served across a wide and scattered farming community. His ministry focused on Afrikaans speak...
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From Soldier to Peacebuilder: Lessons from Basilan

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A Personal Reflection: What Uganda Taught Me About Peace, People, and Myself

Fall 2013: This is the season I return to often in my memory, not because everything was easy, but because everything was real. That semester, I left the comfort of theory-driven classrooms at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, US, and stepped into Gulu, Northern Uganda, for my academic internship, a place that still carried the scars of a brutal conflict.  I arrived there with an open mind and a head full of peacebuilding theories, but I didn’t yet understand how different lived experience would be from what I had studied. Arriving in Gulu: When Theory Meets Humanity Before traveling, I had read a lot about the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the years of violence and displacement that followed. But nothing prepares you for meeting the people who lived through it, the mothers rebuilding homes, the young men seeking identity after war, and the elders trying to reweave their communities. Gulu changed me. Everyone I met carried a story of loss, but also a level of resilien...
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Tibanga, Lugumira, and Wamukota: The First African Ministers of the Reformed Church of East Africa (RCEA)

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Background: The Beginnings of an African Church By the early 1940s, the Dutch Reformed Church missionaries under Bwana Loubser had established a mission presence primarily among the Boer white settler community in Uasin Gishu, focusing their ministry on European farms. The African population—though living and working around these farms—remained largely outside the church’s evangelistic focus. The turning point came with the arrival of Rev. B.B. Ebiyers (Eybers) in 1944, a visionary missionary who believed in extending the gospel to the African communities. Eybers recognized the need to train indigenous leaders who could communicate effectively in Swahili, the lingua franca of East Africa, and relate culturally to the people. He established a small Bible Training Centre at Plateau, near Eldoret, marking the beginning of theological education for Africans within the Reformed Church mission. It was here that three African men—Herbert Tibanga, Lugumira, and Jason Wamukota—would recei...
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Kapsengerut: A Sacred Ground Where Africa and the West Met in Faith

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On the Eldoret–Eldama Ravine road, 16Kms just past Naiberi and Straughburg in Uasin Gishu County, lies a place that quietly bridges continents, generations, and spiritual worlds. Known as Kapsengerut, this unassuming homestead is no ordinary village compound. It is the birthplace of the Reformed Church of East Africa (RCEA), a sacred space where African faith met Western mission, and where a farmworker’s vision gave rise to a lasting church movement. The late Mzee Joseph Cheserem (Sengerut ) the humble farmworker whose faith and vision gave birth to RCEA A Living Heritage At first glance, Kapsengerut looks like any other rural homestead. But as one walks through its grounds, the air feels different. It ia reverent, almost hallowed. Here stand two modest graves side by side: those of Mzee Joseph Cheserem Sengerut and his wife, and just a few meters away, the resting places of J. Mouton and his wife, the South African settlers who first brought the gospel to this part of Uasin Gishu. The...
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Burnout and Renewal: A Journey Through Peace Work

Beginnings in Peace Work Burnout is not something that happens overnight. It builds slowly, almost invisibly, as one pours heart and energy into work that feels too important to step away from. Looking back, I now see how my own journey into peacebuilding began with both promise and peril. In 1995, I joined the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK) as a support officer in Eldoret. At first, my duties were simple: handling logistics, finance, and data management. But peace work in Kenya during the 1990s was no ordinary assignment. Almost immediately, I found myself accompanying staff into volatile regions—places scarred by political violence, cattle raids, and community strife. Our field trips took us to the Uasin Gishu and Kisumu/Nandi border areas, Turkana, West Pokot, Marakwet, and Laikipia. My role quickly shifted from office-based support to the frontline distribution of relief food for communities devastated by conflict and drought. Those early days were eye-opening. I...
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