THE HISTORY OF OSMAN ALLU

Standing stoically in the midst of a modern day town is a century old shop that is known by many from far and wide. Whether a first time visitor or a resident, or even one who has researched about Nyeri, you have definitely heard or seen about Osman Allu. The shop being one of the earliest founded in the post colonial town of Nyeri has stood the test of time, since the turn of the 20th century in 1899 or the whereabouts.

The shop was established by Mohamedally Rattansi who was born in 1882 in Chavand, a village in Kathiawar, India.  His father Rattansi Nanji, a Shia Ismaili, owned a small shop selling basic merchandise, such as salt, sugar, and dates to villagers and neighboring farmers in India. His father later closed shop and he had to support him on a meager income he had. As a young man Mohamedally learnt, however, that there were opportunities in British East Africa (Kenya was part of it). In 1897 the British began to build a railway line from Mombasa to Lake Victoria to open up the hinterland for trade and administration.  A great number of Indian indentured laborers, eventually numbering about 32,000, were recruited to build the line.  The work started in Mombasa and soon, the small Swahili port became a bustling town.  Mohamedally's cousin, Javer Kassam, had already migrated there and ran a small shop.  In those early days the most enterprising of the Asian entrepreneurs was a Shia Ismaili by the name Seth Alidina Visram.  By the turn of the century, Visram had established a chain of dukas stretching from the Coast to the Nile.  There was a great demand for young and adventurous fellow Ismailis to steward the shops.  Seeing this opportunity, Javer sent a message to his young cousin Mohamedally, telling him:  to ‘Come to Africa.  I shall help you find a job.'

 

   

Mohamedally's initial intention was to go to Bombay to find a job. However when his cousin called him to Africa, he departed without informing his parents.  His parents were therefore, worried and his mother fasted for one month wondering where her son was.  Finally, word arrived from Visram that their son Mohamedally was in Kenya with him.

Mohamedally arrives in Nyeri, Mt. Kenya

 Just at the turn of the century, young Mohamedally boarded a dhow from India and docked at the old harbor in Mombasa.  With Javer's help he got a job with Alidina Visram. The firm sent him to run a shop in the newly established administrative centre of Nyeri in Central Kenya.  It lay in the heart of Kikuyu country, in a valley nestling between the ranges of the Aberdares and Mount Kenya.  He arrived there after journeying several days from Nairobi through Naivasha over the Aberdares, with the porters who had carried his trading goods.  They walked along footpaths and animal trails, covering about ten miles per day, resting each night in a forest clearing. He was to make the journey on foot dozens of times over the years until the advent of motor vehicles and roads.    His first customers were Kikuyu farmers living around the new boma.

As he got to know the surroundings, he made trips farther a field and traded with the Wadorobo hunters inhabiting the dense forests of the Aberdares. Barter remained the predominant form of trade at the time, although the Indian rupee was already officially in circulation.  He bartered beads, salt, sugar, amerikani (cotton cloth) and blankets with the Wadorobo hunters, for ivory, rhino horn, hides and skins in exchange. He then transported these goods to Nairobi himself by portage, and returned with a replenished stock of trading goods.  So successful was the barter trade that he soon employed about a hundred porters, each carrying the standard load of 18.16kgs of merchandise.  (Strict rules already regulated the maximum weights porters could carry, and the wages they were to be paid.)

After Mohamedally had been in Nyeri for several years, Seth Alidina Visram died.  His now expansive business empire (he was known as the ‘uncrowned King of Uganda') was inherited by his son Abdulrasul, but it soon began to crumble.  Mohamedally joined forces with a fellow Indian, Osman Allu, who had managed a shop in neighboring Fort Hall (Murang'a), and they bought up the Nyeri shop in partnership.  It then operated under the name of Osman Allu.

In the meantime, European settlement increased in that area by leaps and bounds.  Mohamedally and his partner Osman gave up barter with the indigenous people and now turned to satisfy the needs of these new settlers. Their profit margins in those days remained infinitesimal.  For instance, when they sold sugar scoopful by scoopful out of a sack, the empty sack was the profit.  Slowly, however, they made a success of the business.  They extended the shop-cum-house, and built a mill for grinding maize on the Chania River where it flows to Nyeri.  Mohamedally acquired several properties of his own in the growing township and in neighboring Karatina too.

The partnership continued to prosper. Mohamedally had a flair for business and looked after the customers, while Osman Allu superintended the transport - at first ox teams and wagons – and later the mill.  A setback came in the 1920s when the settlers plotted rebellion and threatened not only to overthrow the colonial administration but to `drive all Indians into the sea'.  The partners took the precaution of sending their families temporarily to India, while they kept the business going with the help of loyal employees.

In 1930, they dissolved the partnership and went their separate ways. Each established a business under his own name.  Mohamedally proceeded to become one of Nyeri's most prominent Asian merchants.  He was a member of the Town Council, which later named a street, where he had a ‘shamba' property, after him.  (The ‘Rattansi Street' sign, however, has vanished over the years and has not been replaced.)

Osman Allu

He arrived in Kenya between 1894 and 1896 aged about 17 years and died here in 1973 aged 96

Years. He told his history to his grandson Yakub Allu who was born here in 1938.

Osman Allu worked for Allidina Visram as a salesman and bookkeeper before he started his own

business. He always said that Allidina Visram was a great merchant and an enterprising man, the

kind that would take risks. He gained a lot of knowledge about business by working for him.

Osman Allu went into partnership with a man called Mohamedally Rattansi and they walked up

to Nyeri where the European settlers were starting a station; there, they started the first shop in

1901 or 1902. Nyeri then had only that shop and the government station. Thereafter they put up

a shop in Murang'a (Fort Hall) and a sawmill in Karatina from where they supplied the sleepers

for the track when the railway line was being laid to Nanyuki. Osman Allu and his wife Jomabai

had three sons and five daughters, all born in Nyeri. He helped to build a proper Indian school in

Nyeri in the late 1920s and he was a big contributor to the building of the present Nyeri Mosque

at about the same time. He contributed to the building of the Catholic Consolata Mission Hospital

at Nyeri, and to the Tumutumu Hospital, this was run by the Church of Scotland. His grandson

Yakub Allu of Nanyuki in an interview has recounted:

“My grandfather had started doing business in Nairobi with insurance (with "Pioneer" aptly named)

and property. He built a large building on Bazaar Street you can see the OA [Osman Allu] Logo

and the date 1938 on the front and back. When my uncle Abdul married he took over the shop in

Nyeri and in 1945 my grandfather moved to Nairobi. He bought a big house near the Suleiman

Verjee Gymkhana on Forest Road. I think that the main reason he went to Nairobi was to provide

a family base there, where all of us grandchildren could live while continuing our schooling.

That house was like a family boarding house, supervised by my grandfather, and because of that I

grew up with him and knew him so well.”