Naivasha Sports Club Celebrates 100 Years

100 Years at Naivasha Sports Club: 1922-2022 is a new book now available from Old Africa books. Contact blake@oldafricamagazine.com to order your copy. Shel Arensen and Chuck Bengough researched the history and wrote the book. A box filled with books of handwritten...

JW Arthur, Missionary

JW Arthur, Missionary: An Early Supporter of African Interests in Kenya John William Arthur, born in 1881, a medical doctor trained in Glasgow, joined the Church of Scotland Mission in Kenya in 1906. He was posted to the Kikuyu mission, where he arrived on 1 January...

The other John Paterson

The Other John Paterson Many of us have heard of the John Patterson who was involved in overcoming the man- eating lions of Tsavo. But there was another man of the same name who had an important, if not so spectacular role. The other John Paterson brought both coffee...

Kenya’s Legion of Frontiersmen

Kenya’s Legion of Frontiersmen The worldwide Legion of Frontiersmen, with a branch in Kenya, was a voluntary, unofficial military organisation not always tolerated by governments. It originated at the turn of the twentieth century during the Boer War in South Africa....

Ivory Poaching in the Lado Enclave

Ivory Poaching in the Lado Enclave Africans and Arabs were not the only ivory poachers in early East Africa. European hunters probably poached far more ivory than Africans and Arabs. Their favoured hunting ground was the Lado enclave, a triangle of land bordering...
The Hook Brothers and the Silverbeck Hotel

The Hook Brothers and the Silverbeck Hotel

Logan Hook, tall and handsome, a submarine commander in the First World War, went to Kenya in 1921. He took his family to Nanyuki where for 15 years they lived in a grass house which cost them £15.00 to build. As they knew nothing about farming, they established the...