Abraham Block: The penniless refugee who built a hotel empire in Kenya

Abraham and Sarah Block visiting Nairobi for a shopping expedition by mule cart in 1908 [Courtesy]

Contrary to popular opinion, the men and women who built Nairobi, and indeed the country, had little or no financial resources. They were armed with no more than ambition and sheer determination to make it in a country European powers had designated as part of a ‘Dark Continent.’

Like some of the famous Rwathia brothers who came to the city on foot, Abraham Block came to Kenya in 1902, as “a penniless Lithuanian Jewish refugee” who only had 20 pounds to his name, as Eroll Trzebinski tells us in the book, The Kenya Pioneers.

That year, the StanleyHotel had just been opened by Mayence Tate, a city dressmaker. The swamp that gave Nairobi its name was yet to be drained but The Stanley shone as a beacon of hope for young Block. “The newness of the corrugated iron was all that separated (the hotel’s) appearance from the other scores of buildings on stilts with wooden steps,” wrote Trzebinski.

But Madam Tate’s hotel had some shortcomings. “She had no mattresses but she was ready to receive guests,” added Trzebinski. Block saw his first business opportunity in Tate’s misfortunes. As he walked around looking for work, he saw heaps of grass that had been cut from both sides of the new railway.

Block reckoned the grass would make for excellent mattress filling and requested the railway superintendent for permission to collect it.

Then he discovered that there were no needles to sew the bags together to make mattresses. “Ingenuity worthy of any pioneer overcame the problem. He sharpened and punctured two bicycle spokes and stitched them with these instead.”

Tate loved the mattresses and ordered 23 more. With the profits, Block was able to buy a 640-acre farm in Kiambu for 1,500 rupees.

Years later, Block heard of a plot for sale in Nairobi but had little money left to buy it. He traded his watch and chain, made a down payment and sold half of the plot to clear the balance.

Later, he exchanged the plot and an extra 500 pounds for the Norfolk Hotel and laid the foundation for one of Kenya’s oldest hotel chains. In 1947, the Block family acquired the New Stanley, the very establishment in which he had supplied grass-filled mattresses 45 years earlier.

At some point, the Block Hotels included the Outspan in Nyeri, Keekorok Lodge in Masai Mara, Naivasha Country Club, Ol Tukai Lodge in Amboseli, Nyali Beach Hotel, Mt Kenya Safari Club and the famous Treetops Hotel.  The New Stanley is now part of Sarova Hotels and Resorts.