The Python’s Ploy

As a little girl at Katangulu, Tanganyika Territory in the late 1940s visits from snakes of various sizes and shapes seemed to be part of our daily routine, especially during the hot months of the seasonal dry time. These periods of drought and sometimes famine...
God Save Our Gracious Queen

God Save Our Gracious Queen

Readers who read Old Africa magazine and bloggers who blog may wonder why on earth Dick Hedges is duplicating an existing blog and why, known for his Leftist views, should he want any monarch saved, gracious or otherwise? To the former question you will see my blog is...
The White Man’s Grave

The White Man’s Grave

Today, not even the most adamant critic of living in Sub-saharan Africa, would suggest that it was a particularily unhealthy area in which to live. This shows how very far medicine has advanced in the last 100 years, because for well in to the 20th century, Africa,...

Platform Parties

The Good Old Days of Platform Parties From the end of WWII until the Kenyan Emergency was declared there were around 40,000 expats in Kenya at any one time, mostly from the UK and mostly on contracts that included ‘passages.’ Some of these expats working for the...

Rogue Rhino

I had a memorable encounter with a rhino when I was five or six years old. My parents had been transferred from Katangulu to Nassa, where they continued to minister among the Sukuma people. I had become more fluent in Kisukuma than English because I played daily with...