Arusha: Temi River

The only significant urban development in the region is Arusha Town, the building of which commenced at the turn of the century. A site was chosen by the Germans in the middle of a thickly populated and cultivated area, and the local inhabitants were moved out. The first headquarters, doubtless of a temporary construction, was on the site of the Clock Tower. Then the building of the Boma commenced; one Arusha elder reminisced:- "when employed on this construction work, six of us were called out to climb a very tall tree and cut the upper branches. We climbed with the aid of a locally made rope such as we used for honey hunting. The Nubu askari pulled the rope away whilst we were up the tree with a saw. Meanwhile another party was cutting the trunk of the tree with a saw. Whilst we were still up the tree, it started to fall. There was nothing we could do as the rope had been removed. We all came down with a crash. Of the six of us three were killed on the spot and three escaped: luckily we survivors were no more than bruised and scratched.".

The Boma was completed and formed the nucleus of the new town and of which one or two of the original German staff quarters remain, one in the hospital compound, another in the A.I.C.C. grounds. But the main staff area was to the east of the Themi [Temi] River, where the houses of the Regional Commissioner replaced the old German structure in the post World War II period. The German gaol was only recently demolished to make way for the E.A. Community Building.

When Kenyon Painter had first arrived at Arusha by ox wagon and mules back in 1907, the town boasted one tiny hotel, known by the name of its Jewish owner. Bloom's. Bloom's was nothing more than a whitewashed, mud-brick building with a roof of corrugated iron sheeting. It had a dozen bedrooms, a chintzy lounge, and a bar cum dining room overlooking a fast snow melt stream called the Themi River. Sunburned German settlers routinely gathered for schnapps and songs on the verandah. The few British residents slouched in for pink gins much as they did in the more sumptuous surroundings of the Norfolk in Nairobi.

Adjacent to the hotel was John Mulholland's Store, which dealt in everything from rhino horn and ivory tusks to trophies of every sort, along with the best groceries in town. He also sold rifles, pistols, likker, vegetables and tinned goods, tents, bedding, mosquito nets, pots and pans, saddles and tack. Arusha was made up of a few modest dwellings, a telegraph office, a couple of rickety Indian-owned mud dukas with false storefronts, a German blacksmith, livery stables, and half a dozen shops owned by Germans, Greeks, and South Africans trading in farm implements, seed beans, cattle, and goatskins. In the town lived several hundred Africans, mostly members of the Wa-Arush, a mixture of intermarried Masai and Meru tribesmen who were sedentary subsistence agriculturalists growing bananas, corn, and cassava. Surrounding the town were German-developed small holdings carved out of nothing and growing everything from cereals to cherries, apples, citrus, coffee, cocoa, vanilla, and rubber.

During the dry season of 1911, Gottlieb Bauer prospected the terrain around the town of Arusha for a better spot to establish his family. He had soon found suitable land in the beautiful forest area on the Temi River in the Wa-Arusha tribal territory. The land was in sight of Arusha located between the villages of the chiefs Angarashi, Toronge, and Mekogi. The river had year round water and enough flow to power a mill. The Bauers bought a further 400 hectares of land there intending to farm coffee and vegetables, but Gottlieb's main focus was to built a grain- and sawmill as well as an oil-press. During 1911 Elise, his wife, and his mother, Friedericke, remained with the children in Leganga (where in December 1911 Rudolf was born), and continued with the vegetable and grain farming, while Gottlieb built a permanent house on the Temi River with several large sheds for all his tools and equipment, a lathe and workbench as well as a blacksmith workshop.

In early 1912 the Bauers left Leganga and resettled in their new house on the Temi River. From Rudolf Bauer's memoires a good description is available of a typical settler family home and its surroundings: "It had a solid foundation and was built up to the raised ground floor with cement and then with bricks, which my father had manufactured with the help of native employees. In a mud pit the clay was pounded with the feet and then filled into wooden moulds and dried in the sun. In this way two large rooms emerged. In the front was the living- and dining room, and behind it the parents" bedroom. A wide staircase led upstairs. To the right of these stairs was the bedroom for us children. The left side served as a provision room. There non-perishable food stuffs were stored, such a 2 sacks of raw coffee, one or two sacks of rice, as well as a large sugarloaf. The roof of the house was covered with corrugated iron. In front of the residence was a porch [�] Behind the building a beautiful flower garden had been created of which our gardener Lempoto was in charge[�]The living quarters and the kitchen building were about 20 meters from the mill-stream. On the right hand side a path lined by lemon trees led to the brick oven. To the left of the garden was an alley of cypress trees. Opposite of the residential building was a big poultry yard, in the middle of which was a large pond for geese and ducks. Many chicken, guinea fowls, and turkeys were kept in the chicken shed, which was raised very high off the ground to provide safety from predators. Next to it was also a pigsty."

Sister Shirley during horse riding lessons on the other side of the Temi River (possibly in the area where the Gymkhana Club is now. Girl in background is Elizabeth Miller.

Shirley was at Mbeya (boarding school) from 1956 to 1959 (Burton House" green checked gingham dresses). Other houses were Stanley (blue), Livingstone (yellow?) and ? (red). She then had one year at Iringa boarding school. In 1959 she was joined by Jane Saddler (sister to Avril).

She then moved to Arusha as a day pupil, but latterly was tutored by a private teacher, along with three other pupils. Two of them were sisters, Elizabeth Miller (mentioned above) and Caroline. Their mother trained a horse called "Two Rivers" and had a farm just outside Arusha. The private tutor was the wife of "Beeswax Smith", who also lived on the other side of the Temi River.

The other man standing over the rhino looks very much like like Mr. Krokowski (polish refugee from Nazi occupied Poland). He owned a jewelry store around the corner from the grocery store on the corner of the town square/roundabout. He had mines around the country, was chief of police, and a big game hunter for many years (trading in ivory), and was eventually killed in his small aircraft on the slopes of Monduli hills. He got into a slip stream and couldn't pull out. His son Joseph survived and lives in London. I was supposed to go up with them that day, but my mother had a call from Mrs. Watts (who lived out past Lake Duluti) asking if I would take out her daughter Dawn, horseriding. After a heated argument, my mother won out, and I had to ride the six miles out there to take Dawn riding!

The picture of the horse. That's the Miller home which was on Themi [Temi] road just before you enter Themi coffee estate, on the way to the Pyrethrum factory built by my father Dr. John Linton, who passed away last year. When my horse arrived on the train from Nairobi, he was boarded in the Miller's paddock for a while. Mr. Miller left the country during the nationalization period (of socialism) with his wealth, in stones, and was sadly killed when the small plane he was absconding in crashed.

Cheers,

Tom Linton

p.s I last heard Jonn Boveniser is 'Down Under' farming.

I've only just now glanced at your site, so I'll give it another persusal and let you know what else I find.

When in Arusha last week I was so lucky to find the channel of the flour mill that my great grandfather built along the Temi in 1911, see attached picture (that's me in the photo). It starts about 100 meters north of the railroad bridge and carries on up north for about 300 meters - It is fed by three spings surfacing next to the Temi.

The house is unfortunately gone. It was exactly at that spot where the railway is crossing the Temi now.