Rheumatoid Arthritis Support

Cole was the third son of Lowry Cole, 4th Earl of Enniskillen (1845-1924) and his wife Charlotte Marion Baird. He entered the 10th Royal Hussars as a lieutenant in 1900, at age 19, and went to South Africa for the Second Boer War. After being injured in the war, he made his way to Kenya where his sister Florence had married the prominent settler Lord Delamere. Cole first tried farming in the area beyond Thomson's Falls in 1905, but he eventually moved to the Lake Elementaita area where his wealthy brother-in-law gifted him . This parcel adjoined Delamere's own farm, Soysambu, on the western side of the lake, between Lakes Naivasha and Nakuru. Cole named his farm "Kekopey Ranch"; the name is supposed to be from a Masaai word meaning "place where green turns white" (a reference to the soda and diatomite around the hot springs near the lake).

In 1917, he married Lady Eleanor Balfour, niece of former British Prime Minister Lord Balfour. Cole was deported to the German East African Protectorate after he shot dead a farm laborer for stealing one of his favorite Marino rams, imported from New Zealand. He returned secretly to Kekopey dressed as a Somali and his mother pleaded his case with the British government.

Cole's last days were spent in wretched misery. Blind in one eye and confined to a wheelchair in constant pain owing to his rheumatoid arthritis, he shot himself in 1929 at age 48, at his favourite spot, the viewpoint where his memorial now stands.


Adapted from the Wikipedia article Galbraith Lowry Egerton Cole, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki