Eldoret

The plateau the city stands on was Nandi and Keiyo grazing country when the Uganda Railway opened the highlands to British administration at the turn of the twentieth century. A settlement grew at a crossing of the Sosiani River, and in its first years it was known simply as Farm 64, a number that recorded its distance of about 103 kilometres from the railhead at Londiani. The name Eldoret comes from the Maasai word eldore, "stony river", a reference to the bed of the Sosiani. From August 1908 Afrikaner families, originally from South Africa, moved up onto the Uasin Gishu plateau to take up farms, and British settlers took others; wheat, maize and dairy cattle replaced open grassland.

The extension of the Uganda Railway from Londiani reached the town in 1924, giving the plateau's grain a way to market and fixing Eldoret as the trading centre of the North Rift. Mills, a creamery and later a textile plant followed, and the road west towards the Ugandan border made it a transit town for goods moving inland.

After independence the farms were subdivided and bought by Kenyan families, and the city expanded quickly with them. Moi University was founded in 1984 on the plateau south-east of the town, the Chepkoilel campus north of the centre became the University of Eldoret, and the population multiplied several times over. Land disputes between long-settled and newer farming communities also made the district a centre of the violence that followed the disputed election of 2007, including the burning of a church at Kiambaa near the city. Eldoret was granted city status in 2024, the fifth in Kenya.

Eldoret's international reputation rests on running. The hills and dirt roads around the city and the escarpment town of Iten, a short drive to the north-east, are the training ground of a remarkable line of Kenyan Olympic and marathon champions, most of them Kalenjin, and athletes from around the world come to train at altitude alongside them. Groups running in loose formation at dawn are an everyday sight, the city's stadium is named after the Olympic champion Kipchoge Keino, and a returning winner is met with celebration and with mursik, the smoked sour milk poured for guests of honour. For many years the city was also the home of the Discovery cross-country championships, and the Eldoret Discovery Half Marathon was run for the 28th time in 2019.

The wider culture is Kalenjin — Nandi and Keiyo above all — with age-sets, cattle, initiation ceremonies and respect for elders still shaping family life, overlaid by a strongly Christian public culture of church choirs, harambee fundraising and long Sunday services. Decades of migration have also made the city mixed: Kikuyu, Luhya, Luo, Kisii and Somali families trade in the same streets, and Swahili is the common language of the market.

Student life from two universities and several colleges gives the town cheap eating places, bookshops and music, and football and athletics dominate conversation. Weddings and funerals bring extended families back to the plateau from Nairobi and abroad, and both are large, communal and carefully organised affairs.

About 475,000 people lived in the urban area at the 2019 census, and the city has grown fast since, spreading east towards Kapsoya and Kaptagat and south-west into Langas. It is a farming city first: maize, wheat, dairy and horticulture from the plateau are traded, milled and processed here, and the cereals board, mills, creameries and a textile plant are among the larger employers, alongside the universities, the referral hospital and a wholesale trade supplying much of the North Rift.

The rhythm of the day starts early. Matatus and boda-bodas fill the roads into town before dawn, runners are already on the dirt roads outside it, the market takes deliveries from the farms in the early morning, and the centre empties again in the evening as people return to the estates. Rents are lower than in Nairobi and the city has drawn businesses and residents for that reason.

The pressures are those of a fast-growing Kenyan city: housing and roads lagging behind the population, water supply and drainage under strain, youth unemployment, and the cost of fertiliser and fuel for farmers. Land ownership on the plateau remains a sensitive subject, and election years are watched closely.

Eldoret eats the food of the Kenyan highlands. Ugali, the stiff maize meal known in Kalenjin as kimnyet, is the base of most meals, eaten with sukuma wiki (braised collard greens), managu or other traditional greens, beans, and a stew of beef, goat or chicken. Githeri, maize and beans boiled together, is the everyday canteen lunch, and chapati and rice appear on Sundays and at celebrations.

Nyama choma — goat or beef roasted over charcoal, ordered by the kilo and cut up on a board with kachumbari, a salad of raw tomato and onion — is the social meal, eaten at butchery-bars in town and along the roads towards Iten and Kaptagat. Mutura, a grilled sausage made with meat and spices, is sold from street grills in the evening.

Dairy is everywhere in a city surrounded by dairy farms: fresh milk, mala (fermented milk) and above all mursik, the Kalenjin sour milk fermented in a gourd lined with soot from particular trees, which gives it a smoky taste and a ceremonial role at homecomings. Breakfast is chai, strong tea boiled with milk and sugar, with mandazi or chapati; roasted maize is sold at the roadside; and local lagers and traditional brews are drunk in the town's bars.