by Shel Arensen | Jun 21, 2016 | Shel Arensen
New From Old Africa books! Where Antelope Roam: And Other Stories Out of Africa by Jon Arensen The short stories in this book are all connected to Jon Arensen’s experiences in East Africa. They are deeply personal and are narrated in the first person. As in any...
by Christine Nicholls | Jun 20, 2016 | Christine Nicholls
What caused young men to join the exodus from Britain to East Africa in 1910-1912? Let us take one example and look at his memoir. Brian Havelock Potts, born in Brixton on 30 March 1891 as a fourth child and only son, came from a middle-class family. His father...
by Christine Nicholls | May 19, 2016 | Christine Nicholls, Uncategorized
For the last two months I have been talking about the founding of the Scott Sanatorium, and the part Violet Donkin played in this. However, a year after the facility opened, she departed for England. Why? A scrutiny of the surviving manuscripts gives us a clue. We...
by Christine Nicholls | May 9, 2016 | Christine Nicholls
On Call in Africa in War and Peace, 1910-1932 by Norman Parsons Jewell Norman Jewell’s memoir gives us the best eyewitness account of medical conditions among the troops fighting in East Africa that has been published so far. It is a riveting story of...
by Christine Nicholls | Apr 21, 2016 | Christine Nicholls
Violet Donkin and the Scott Sanatorium Last month we read about the establishment of the Scott Sanatorium outside Nairobi under the leadership of the nurse and midwife (Frances) Violet Donkin. Who was she? I mentioned her in my blog of 9 May 2012, but gave few...
by Christine Nicholls | Mar 20, 2016 | Christine Nicholls
The Scott Sanatorium In 1912 it was felt that there was a need for a sanatorium in Nairobi for white settlers, and the idea for the Scott Sanatorium took root. What was the origin of its name? It was named for the Rev. Henry Edwin Scott, LRCP and SE, a medical...
by Christine Nicholls | Feb 22, 2016 | Christine Nicholls
An Eccentric East African Hotelier If you crossed the Kenya border into Uganda in the 1940s you came across a rather dilapidated building with a faded tin roof, half a mile from the border, at Tororo. On a board it announced itself as a bar: ‘Prop.: H.H....
by Shel Arensen | Feb 16, 2016 | Shel Arensen
Old Africa has been working for over two years on a project covering over 100 years of horse racing in Kenya. We’ve just completed the rough edit of the full book and are moving into the stage for final editing and photo selection. I think we can use about 300...
by Christine Nicholls | Jan 19, 2016 | Christine Nicholls
The First European Schools in Kenya On reaching Nairobi in 1900 the Uganda Railway set up its own school there for the children of its white workers, in a corrugated iron shed near Nairobi station. The first school for European children in Nairobi was set up by the...
by Christine Nicholls | Dec 19, 2015 | Christine Nicholls
The Kakamega Goldfields The recent interest in gold in the Kakamega district reminds us of the first gold rush in the region – in the early 1930s. In 1930 Kakamega township was an open space with a few Indian dukas, but in the middle of the decade it became a...
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