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...
The Oldest Blog

The Oldest Blog

I am pleased to say that reactions to my blogging efforts have been favourable but I have noticed an undertone of veiled criticism in so much as the average reader of Old Africa is naturally interested in the period of African history when European discoveries and...
A Patriotic Failure

A Patriotic Failure

In early November 1963, the Nairobi City council woke up to the fact that they had four weeks to prepare the city for independence celebrations and there were very few people left in Kenya with experience of such things. I found myself roped in on some sub-committee...