From talk of Chinese colonisation to a video doing rounds on social media of Kenyans speaking Mandarin, there is a growing desire to understand what China will mean to Africa in future.

China has used this month’s 70-year celebration to showcase its ambition, from the display of nuclear power, military hardware to a declaration by President Xi Jinping that ‘no force can stop the progress of the Chinese people’.

Several colonial-era houses, a railway station, a golf course, exotic trees and an old cemetery leave no doubt that Nakuru was once the playground of British settlers before independence. 

A few of their descendants are still around. Like a bowl, the town has a lake in the middle, Menengai to the east, Mau Hills to the west and other hills to the north and south. 

Its warm and humid weather may have attracted the early settlers whose names are inscribed in the neglected Nakuru North cemetery. 

Kenyan politics is often depicted as a battle between different ethnic “Big Men” who can mobilise their supporters with a click of their fingers.