SAMPLE ARTICLES FROM OLD AFRICA
Missionaries Murdered at Golbanti
by Henry Wright
1886 Maasai warriors, armed with long heavy spears and terrible clubs, met Methodist missionaries, John and Annie Houghton, just outside the stockade of their mission station at Golbanti on the Tana River. A second group of Maasai joined the first on the open road and surrounded the Houghtons... Read more
Italian Expedition Scales Ruwenzoris
1906 The Italian adventurer, Luigi Amedeo di Savoy, Duke of Abruzzi, spearheaded an expedition to explore, map and photograph the mysterious Ruwenzori Mountains in the heart of Africa. No stranger to harsh conditions, Luigi Amedeo began his life in a palace... Read more
Epic Safari Marred by Disasters
told by Dominik Kamonde Kitonyi
1967 As I drove the Land Rover through Uganda on the way to Kidepo National Park, I felt a jolt behind me. The trailer tyre hurtled past me and into the grass. I stopped to check the damage. The wheel had sheered off at the axle... Read more
We Pushed the Governor Out of the Mud
told by Jill Simpson
1946 We rounded a curve on the wet road, chains spitting mud into the air, and found a big fancy car stuck in a mud hole...Read more
Pioneering Postman Delivers the Mail
submitted by Ehsan H. Malik
1912 “I need a volunteer to inspect the new road from Kibigori Station to Eldora River,” announced J. T. Gosling, then Kenya’s Postmaster-General. Alif Din volunteered for the trip, which would take him from Nairobi to present day Eldoret. Din, accompanied by an African companion named Omolo, loaded six 45-pound bags of mail onto the train and began a 24-hour rail journey to Kibigori Station...Read more
Great African Balloonograph Safari Fizzles
1909 Charles Hughes spent his honeymoon in Kenya as the writer and secretary for the great African Balloonograph Expedition. His bride Anna didn’t join him. She spent their honeymoon with her mother in Europe. The couple’s strange start to married life is entwined with the African Balloonograph Expedition of 1909... Read more
Only in Africa -
Quirky tales that happened in Africa
The Lion Roars at Dawn
On a camping trip to Maasai Mara I had a new kijana as my camp helper to make the fire in the morning for chai. We slept in different tents. Early one morning I called to him to go make the fire. I heard the kijana getting up and the tent zipper opening. Then I also heard the unmistakable low grunts of a simba very close to camp. I called out, careful not to tell the kijana there was a lion or he might have panicked. “Maingi, come back.”
“Why?” Maingi asked. Suddenly the lion roared, shaking the air. Maingi dove into his tent. We stayed in our tents until the lion had gone and the sun had risen. We drank our chai late that day.
Dominik Kamonde Kitonyi, Tala
Newsreels Fire Imagination
During World War II we sometimes saw black and white newsreels with moving pictures of how the war was progressing. We kids enjoyed watching the tanks clank across the screen firing rounds of ammunition. Sometimes the newsreels also showed other news. One time we watched a motorcycle daredevil drive off a ramp and fly over a group of men laid out on the ground like logs. This fired my imagination. I went and built a ramp of my own. Then I persuaded my brothers, Willard and Howard, to lie down on the ground. Trusting me, they agreed. I pushed my bike a long way behind my ramp, and then rode it as fast as I could. The ramp launched me into the air, but not as far as I had hoped and I landed on top of my brothers. I thought I could fix the ramp for a better leap, but my brothers didn’t want me to try the stunt a second time.
Dilly Andersen, Laikipia
