How a ‘headstrong historian’ is rewriting Kenya’s colonial history
Chao Tayiana Maina was doing digital heritage work before she even knew it had a name.
Trying to settle into university in Voi, a Kenyan town 215 miles from her home, she took to going on walks. One day, she stumbled upon Voi railway station, a single-story red-brick building that was once a key military transport point for British colonialists during the World War I.
Fascinated by the station’s beauty, and the wider history of the colonial-era Kenya-Uganda railway, she began thinking of how to preserve the memory of the stations. After more than a century of use, the railway was in decline. And with Kenya planning a new Chinese-built railway, some old stations were set to be demolished.
Over four years, with an interactive map.
