The Muthaiga Country Club is a country club in Nairobi, Kenya. Located in the suburb of Muthaiga, about 15 minutes’ drive from the city centre, Muthaiga Country Club opened in Narobi, Kenya, on New Year’s Eve in 1913, and became a gathering place for the colonial British settlers in British East Africa, which became the Colony of Kenya in 1920.
One of the club's main founders was The Hon Berkeley Cole (1882-1925), an Anglo-Irish aristocrat from Ulster. Cole was a son of the 4th Earl of Enniskillen and was a brother of The Hon Lowry Cole (1881-1929).
Early Years and Colonial Influence
Many settlers made the trek from their distant farms in the Highlands to revel in Nairobi during Race Week. Some came to get supplies. Others came to drown their sorrows following the latest crop failure, cattle disease, drought or flood. The only club available in those days was frequented mainly by Government officials, authorities who most settlers were continually at loggerheads with over their land distribution policies.
As a result, the settlers decided to build their own club on the other side of town. They called h Muthaiga Country Club. Barely had the Club opened when, in August 1914, British East Africa was thrust into war against German East Africa and the majority of Club members volunteered for active service to the dismay of their families and demise of many of their farms. As a result, due lo km- utilisation, the Club teetered on the brink of insolvency for many of its formative years and, had it not been for its major benefactor, Major James Archibald Morrison may never have survived.
Between the wars, Kenya's reputation, or more particularly that of the ‘Happy Valley’ set, grew as an exclusive playground for a privileged few who, unlike the majority of Club members who were hard-working settlers, shed their clothes, morals and inhibitions with equal alacrity in pursuit of pleasure. The advent of WWII in 1939 again drew a dark cloud over the Club with numerous members enlisting for military' service in distant theatres of war, many never to return. Then, no sooner had WWII been won.
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Descriptions in Literature
The Muthaiga Country Club is described in Beryl Markham's 1942 memoir West with the Night: "'Na Kupa Hati M'zuri' (I Bring You Good Fortune) was, in my time, engraved in the stone of its great fireplace." Evelyn Waugh describes the Muthaiga Country Club in his 1931 travel book Remote People (also included in the anthology When the Going Was Good).
Built in 1913 among leafy ficus trees in a remote, exclusive part of Nairobi, the Muthaiga club - like similar clubs built about that time in Zimbabwe and South Africa - was conceived of as a place where white settlers could kick back, socialize, and talk about everything from cricket to Mother England.
Muthaiga, more than any of the other clubs in Kenya, became known as a center for white parties, intrigues, and outrageous behavior, ranging from silly pranks to wife-swapping. In its heyday during the 1930s, the club wrote James Fox in his novel "White Mischief," was "a place beyond the reach of society's official censure."
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Evolution and Modernization
Discrimination against Africans, like discrimination against Asians and Jews, officially ended in the late 1960s. Women, meanwhile, were allowed to become members in their own right two years ago - and today the club is more of a mix of the society around it - although certainly not a reflection.
“But as nationalism in Kenya got strong in the '60s and '70s, they had to let us in. They had no choice. That is when my father joined." For up-and-coming Africans at the time, it was about making contacts and advancing themselves.
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Today, the club is a study in the past trying to hold the present at bay. Although blacks are now allowed to join, the membership remains predominantly white, and all the staff are black.
Like most of their fellow members, Chaz, Anthony, and Stuart are the sons of European settlers who arrived on the continent in the early part of the century. They are known here as "KCs," or Kenyan Cowboys. A privileged few among Kenya's largely impoverished population of 30 million, the 5,000 or so KCs are generally wealthier and better educated than most in the country. Many live a freewheeling sort of life with safaris on the weekends, trips to Europe in summer, and lots of evenings in between at the club.
Contemporary Features and Traditions
It is not just its history that makes Muthaiga Country Club so special. Today, some of its finest moments are contemporary: its comfortable en suite bedrooms with their modern amenities, its first-class sports facilities and extended library with its 20,000 books.
The club's past includes figures such as Hugh Cholmondeley, the third Baron of Delemare, who, with his upcountry settler friends, would amuse themselves with activities such as shooting live rounds into the stuffed lion displayed in the hallway, throwing gramophones out of ballroom windows, or setting dinner chairs in a row and then pushing them around the club, chugging and hooting like a train.
The Muthaiga club today is far more tame, but retains an air of all that it once was. The bowling green and wine cellar look the same as they did half a century ago; the only paper available at tea time is The London Times; and conversations over afternoon bridge invariably have something to do with the weekend polo match, or the children's boarding school. Men must wear a jacket and tie and remove their hats for dinner; and women are not allowed in the men's bar.
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The rulebook says firearms must never be left unattended, nor nannies left unpaid if they accompany children to the swimming pool. Meanwhile, young rowdy KCs, like Chaz and his friends, are allowed to drum up whatever mischief they desire.
In addition to social gatherings, the club offers accommodation. Today, the club is still frequented by the upper echelons of Kenyan society.
Muthaiga Country Club celebrated its Centenary amidst an evening of New Year splendour, sirikisa dancers, much popping of champagne corks, an array of sumptuous dishes and dancing by nearly 400 members into the wee hours - and more until dawn. Members were in jubilant mood - becoming of its great traditions spanning ten decades from that first evening on 31 December 1913 when a mere fourteen founding members launched the establishment as darkening clouds of war scurried across Europe and Eastern Africa.
We are taken on a safari from the Club’s earliest days to the Republic of Kenya at Fifty today. There is a rich store of accounts and vignettes from the settler farmers - gentry and pioneer, the romantics - yes Karen Blixen, Dennis Finch Hatton and Joss Errol, a strong sprinkling of royalty, film stars, and eccentrics to the giants of the post-independence era. Equally, no Club builds ‘character’ unless those who have served as waiters, barmen, chefs and administrative staff can have their stories told. The Club’s ability to remain a catalyst for those in Kenyan society of all cultures, creeds and races able to embrace the future and make changes, whilst fiercely protecting the Club’s traditional values, flows through the text and images.
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