For four days last week, local and international golfers walked along the well-manicured lawns of Karen Country Club, breaking sweat as they chased a 2.7 million dollar dream. The Magical Kenya Open, part of the DP World Tour, was back at one of the oldest golf courses in the country.
Yet as the golfers and hordes of supporters traversed the 18-hole course, few may have stopped to think about the intrigues that gave birth to the 90-year-old club. The club’s history is intertwined with that of Karen Blixen, the former landowner whose name reverberates across the entire region.
Karen, the prolific author whose works include the book Out of Africa, came to Kenya in 1914 and acquired a sprawling bungalow constructed in 1912 by Swedish civil engineer Ake Sjogren in the southwestern part of the fledgling capital.
The house, now part of the National Museums of Kenya, holds a rich collection of Karen’s items, including her jewellery chest, some of her original paintings, literary works, kitchenware and an antique wall clock. Adorning the walls are early photographs of Karen with famous personalities, including Marilyn Monroe.
Unknown to many is the fact that Karen’s image once adorned the Danish krone, as evidenced by a framed note on one of the walls. However, photographing her literary works and paintings is prohibited by the Rungsted Foundation of Denmark, which holds exclusive rights to the artefacts.
Karen, though, had a business mind beyond writing and entertaining friends at the house. Through her family’s investments and with the help of her two lovers, Bror von Blixen and British big game hunter Denys Finch Hatton, she ran a vast 4,500-acre estate, 600 acres of which were used for coffee farming.
In May 1931, Hatton was killed in a biplane crash in Tsavo. Coupled with other personal tragedies, Karen was unable to manage the farm on her own. In addition, the soil and altitude proved unsuitable for coffee farming, while the Great Depression of the early 1930s did little to help her cause.
Furthermore, her business venture never recovered from a fire that gutted the coffee processing plant, forcing her to sell the farm.
A young English banker known as Remi Martin, whom Karen Club insists has no connection to the brandy, arranged the acquisition of Karen’s property for subsequent development into a residential suburb. The contract was signed on April 1, 1931, with Martin as managing director of the newly formed Karen Estates.
From the start, Martin needed to attract buyers, and establishing a club was one way to sway people who already belonged to other clubs to Karen.
Interestingly, Karen was so remote that it was associated more with Ngong than Nairobi. Despite the erratic water supply, the proponents of the club managed to turn the fairways from harsh browns to greens, a first step in transforming Karen into a top club.
According to the club’s archival records, Karen was originally planned to host nine holes but, with land available, it was decided to add a second nine in 1934. The club was incorporated on May 19, 1937, as a company limited by guarantee, while the course was officially opened in October that year.
First members
The original members needed to raise Sh50 for men and Sh30 for women to access the club, tidy sums at the time.
The first golfers to hit the fairways were A K Gibson and F S Dunn, in a match between the club and the Kenya Golfing Society.
But this inaugural match in October was not without drama. As chronicled in Karen Country Club: A Potted History, the two were not the only ones enjoying the sunshine at the new course: “As the latter, who had bought himself a new golf driver for the occasion, addressed his ball, so did a cobra by slipping between his feet. Neither cobra nor driver survived the ensuing melee. Mr Dunn did, but desisted in true gentlemanly fashion from pursuing a claim against his teammates for a new driver.”
Nairobi and its environs were still wild spaces where animals roamed freely. These animals did not get the memo that a members’ club was being developed in their neighbourhood.
Baboons, both annoying and aggressive, caused enough ruckus whenever balls went off course. Grazers such as zebras, buffaloes and eland treated the grounds as their regular meeting point, damaging the lawns.
The most feared, of course, were the lions that caused considerable disruption to construction works. Claire Gaier, a junior member, found notices erected around Karen warning residents of the presence of lions hilarious.
If you came across a lion in the course of daily activities, residents were advised not to panic but to stop and turn around calmly before walking back in the direction from which they had come. The menace from the animals dropped considerably when the property was fenced off.
The club has faced other tumultuous moments in the years since, notably a fire that gutted the main building at the beginning of March 1975, in which nothing was salvaged.
The club, with its chequered past, has since been modernised to the point of hosting national, regional and international golf tournaments. It represents a level of opulence that Karen Blixen, the original landowner, never fully enjoyed.