Have you ever heard the saying, ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we get there’? Well, for those who were tasked with building the Kenya-Uganda Railway, crossing the Tsavo River proved a horrendously difficult endeavour.
The ambitious plan to build a railway traversing the East Africa Protectorate had just been put into action. The labourers from India had arrived, and the building materials had been acquired. Everything was ready for the next stage of construction: a bridge that would connect Tsavo East and Tsavo West. When the project was planned, its engineers probably envisioned the erection of this section as a straightforward task. Unfortunately, it wasn’t destined to be such smooth sailing.
Examining Things Through a Different Lens
Having travelled from their home country on the promise of 12-rupee salaries and free healthcare, the Indian labourers were in for a rude shock when their camps began to be attacked by hungry lions. As for the native Africans, who were already disgruntled with British interference in their local affairs, salt was added to the wound when their reports of regular disappearances – an early warning of the chaos to come – were initially ignored by the project lead, Lieutenant-Colonel John Henry Patterson.
Defence planning
Over the course of several months, the labourers lived in fear of when the next attack would come. They helplessly watched their co-workers get dragged away to their deaths, but refusing to let fear consume them, they came up with an action plan. In an attempt to protect themselves and ward off the two predators, they built thorn fences and lit huge bonfires. Unfortunately, their plan failed; it did not stop the lions. So, one by one, fearful workers began to disappear from camp, preferring to lose employment, rather than their lives. As for the rest, fed up that their concerns were falling on deaf ears, they decided to go on strike, refusing to work on the railway until a secure structure was built to protect them.
The empire took notice of the situation, and Lord Salisbury, the British Prime Minister at the time, made a statement from all the way in London, “The whole of the works were put to a stop because a pair of man-eating lions appeared in the locality and conceived a most unfortunate taste for our workmen. At last, the labourers entirely declined to carry on unless they were guarded by iron entrenchments. Of course, it is difficult to work a railway under these conditions and until we found an enthusiastic sportsman to get rid of these lions our enterprise was seriously hindered.”
The enthusiastic sportsman Salisbury spoke of was Patterson. With the help of several Indian guards, he had mounted an attack on the lions, and by 29th December 1898, nine months after the turmoil had begun, both lions were pronounced dead.
And so… the work on the railway continued.
The Aftermath
The Tsavo River Bridge remains functional, even today. It is a testament to the many lives lost during the construction of The Kenya-Uganda Railway. The exact number of people who were killed remains unknown. Modern-day accounts estimate that 28 Indians and 5 Europeans died, but the numerous African lives lost went undocumented.
