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A Quiet Christmas Pilgrimage on Sergoit Hill Faces Pressure from Development

Every Christmas Day and on December 26, thousands of children and young people converge on a cluster of rocky hills in Kenya’s North Rift, about 20 kilometres northeast of Eldoret along the Moiben road. There are no posters, no social media campaigns, and no official organisers. Yet for more than four decades, the annual climb to Sergoit Hill has continued, an unspoken tradition passed from generation to generation. Locals describe it as an annual ritual, even a pilgrimage, though it carries no formal religious or cultural meaning. What sustains it is memory, habit, and the simple pull of the hill itself. “It was like a must-do thing,” recalls Sammy Bungei, who participated frequently in the late 1970s and 1980s. “Every Christmas we would walk from Kuinet, nearly 20 kilometres, to climb the hill with other children.” Roots in a Simpler Time The tradition is believed to have begun in the early 1970s, when entertainment options in rural Uasin Gishu were limited. With no television, ...
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A Seed That Fell to the Ground: The Gospel According to Rose Barmasai

When Jesus said, “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces many seeds,” He was speaking of His own sacrifice. Yet throughout history, God has raised men and women whose lives echo this Gospel truth. Rose Barmasai was one of them. Rose Barmasai in 1998, a year before her death. Twenty-seven years after her tragic death at Chembulet trading center, along the Iten-Eldoret road, her story still stirs the conscience of the church. She died returning from Chemalingot, where she had spent the day mediating between the Pokot and Turkana, two communities locked in cycles of revenge, cattle raids, and generational trauma. Her life ended in the very work she had given herself to: reconciling God’s children. Born in 1957 in Turesia, Keiyo South, Rose grew up in a region where ethnic tensions, political manipulation, and cattle‑raiding violence shaped daily life. She trained as a theologian at a time when few women in the Reformed Churc...
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Tibanga, Lugumira, and Wamukota: The First African Ministers of the Reformed Church of East Africa (RCEA)

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, Hubert Tibanga, Jeremia Lugumira, and Jason Wamukota, wou...
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