In 1895 a fortified settlement on Chetambe Hill was attacked by a colonial force with a machine gun. The people inside were killed in numbers nobody has ever properly counted. Twenty acres have been identified for a memorial. The ground is still empty.
What happened, and what is disputed
That there was a fort, that it was taken, and that the dead were many — these are not in dispute. The numbers are: estimates vary so widely that quoting any single figure would mislead, because no count was made by anyone with an interest in making one.
Something else is disputed too, and it matters. The ground is Tachoni. Most published accounts describe the dead as Bukusu. Both statements are made confidently and often. The Trust takes no position on a question the evidence does not settle — we gather the accounts, attribute them, and mark what remains unknown.
But notice what that disagreement means in practice. A community whose most significant historical site is routinely attributed to its larger neighbour has a particular reason to want that site marked, and marked accurately.
The promise, and the promise, and the promise
A memorial at Chetambe has been announced by successive governments. The most recent commitment was given publicly in December 2025, at the Tachoni Cultural Festival, alongside undertakings on Webuye Pan Paper and the arrears owed to its former employees.
None of it is unreasonable. The land has been identified. The historical significance is not contested by anyone. What is missing is not agreement — it is a date, a budget line, and somebody answerable.
This is the pattern our elders have described after two election cycles: the community is courted, commitments are made warmly and in public, and afterwards there is nothing written down to hold anyone to.
So we wrote it down
The memorial is item CH-03 in the Tachoni Charter. Not as a grievance, but as a specific and checkable ask:
CH-03 · The Chetambe memorial. Construction of the promised memorial on the twenty acres already identified, to those killed in the 1895 siege. We ask a candidate to commit to securing the land, a construction timetable, and a role for Tachoni elders in how the site is interpreted and who is named on it.
That last clause is deliberate. A monument built without the community that buried those people would repeat, in stone, exactly the erasure the monument is meant to answer.
What happens next
The Charter goes to every declared candidate for Governor of Bungoma, on the same terms and with the same deadline. Every response is published on this site as received. So is every non-response.
The Trust does not support or oppose any candidate — it is a non-partisan body and intends to stay one. What the community’s elders and clans do with the answers is entirely a matter for them. Our job is to make sure that this time there is a document.
Sources. Family testimony on the siege is held in the Trust’s archive under accession TA-2026-0009. Commitments given at the Tachoni Cultural Festival, Masinde Muliro Grounds, Webuye, December 2025, as reported in the Kenyan press. Published accounts of the 1895 events differ on the identity and number of the dead; the Trust holds them side by side rather than choosing between them.
