Kiambogo
The site for the first school building of Rift Valley Academy was a plot of scrub brush and small trees known to the local Kikuyu as Kiambogo, “place of the buffalo.” The buffalo remains the school mascot to this day.
Initially the Kiambogo building was to be made of bricks fired by trained Indian masons who came to Kenya to work on the railroad. But after a large kiln burst into flames it was decided that building bricks was too dangerous.
Instead, almost 200 African workers went to work chiseling and transporting rock from a nearby dormant volcano, Mt. Longonot. In the words of Phil Dow,
“Thus from the lava and ash of Africa’s womb came forth the cornerstone of the Rift Valley Academy.”
