More Stories from East Africa's past for you to enjoy
The Mythical Nandi Bear – Eyewitness Reports
Eyewitness Reports of the Nandi Bear This mythical creature was named the Nandi bear by Europeans because accounts of its existence came mainly from the Nandi people (part of the Kalenjin). Early reports by Europeans describe a bearlike creature. For example Geoffrey...
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...
African Education in Early Colonial Kenya
Missionary teacher with African students. It was the missions who first started education for the African population during colonial times in Kenya, because education was essential for their evangelical work and the training of Africans to take up proselytising. In...
New book about Malindi and History of the East African Coast
Bluff is Old Africa's latest book, an autobiography that is set in Malindi on the Kenya coast from the 1940s until the 1970s. Written by Thomas Allfree, a fisheries officer and one of Malindi's 'characters,' this book evokes life in the coastal town and gives insight...
Arms Trade in East Africa
Arms Trade in East Africa In 1847 the missionary Johann Ludwig Krapf saw a caravan taking 1000 muskets inland; this was just one example of the vast number of arms supplied to the interior of Africa. When traders, Arab and other, reached Uganda it was common for them...
Epidemics in Early Nairobi
Now that we are suffering another epidemic, it is interesting to look at the epidemics in Nairobi 120 years ago, when the city was in its infancy. There was an outbreak of bubonic plague in 1902, in the Indian bazaar. There were 69 cases of whom 55 died. Energetic...
Europeans Settle in Molo
Europeans Settle in Molo In 1819 Sir Frederick Jackson was travelling from Naivasha to Sotik. When he emerged from the Mau forest he saw miles of rolling countryside. The first surveys of this area were made in 1903. It was an uninhabited plateau, too cold at...
Princess Elizabeth becomes Queen in Kenya
Princess Elizabeth becomes Queen in Kenya Upon their marriage in June 1947 Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip acquired one of their more unusual wedding presents: Sagana Lodge, at Kiganjo near Nyeri, given by the people of Kenya. In 1952 they went to Kenya to stay...
The First Kenya Railway Survey
The First Kenya Railway Survey The final routes of the East African Railway Now that the new railway is again under consideration it is interesting to look at the original plans for the first Kenya-Uganda railway. The preliminary surveys were made in 1891 and 1892...
Hunting with Hounds in Early Colonial Kenya
Hunting with Hounds in Early Colonial Kenya Early British settlers in Kenya brought with them a favourite hobby of the upper classes – hunting with hounds. A small pack of English foxhounds was imported from India by George Hammond Goldfinch, who settled in British...
Mombasa’s Roman Catholic Cathedral
In 1885 the first modern Catholics in Mombasa were encouraged by Monsignor Raoul de Courmont, Vicar Apostolic of Zanzibar, who sent from Zanzibar Father Alexandre le Roy, a Holy Ghost missionary disguised as an Arab to avoid religious rivalry, on an exploratory visit...
The Prosaic Problems of Very Early Nairobi
The early colonial governors of Kenya were much exercised by the unglamorous subject of sanitation, particularly in the swamp on which Nairobi had inadvisedly developed from the few storage shacks constructed there by the railway builders, before they tackled the long...
Trout Fishing in Kenya
Trout Fishing in Kenya Kenya is renowned for its excellent trout fishing, but trout are not indigenous to the country. They were introduced to Kenya rivers during the early years of the 20th century. Lords Delamere and Colonel Grogan purchased a large consignment of...
James Wood Rogers Killed in Congo
James Wood Rogers The Prescott Journal Miner, of Prescott, Arizona, reported 21 August 1912 that Representative Norris of Nebraska had introduced a resolution requesting the American President to send to the House of Representatives all information he had about the...
Andrew Rattray and the Training of Zebras
Andrew Rattray and the Training of Zebras Andrew Rattray Zebras are notoriously difficult to train. Any hope that they could be pack animals in Kenya, where horses died speedily, was abandoned after the early years of colonialism, but not until strenuous...
Kitale in 1930
Kitale in 1930 I am grateful to Nick Symes for showing me this letter a farming friend in Kitale wrote to his father: It paints a good picture of Kitale in 1930, the year in which the photographs below were taken. “Kitale was as far inland and as near the borders...
Should Afrikaans have been Taught in Plateau Schools?
Should Afrikaans have been Taught in Plateau Schools? A large number of Afrikaners on the Uasin Gishu plateau in 1910 approached the Governor to establish a school for their children. The government did establish two small schools in early 1910 but insisted on the...
Ivory Smuggling in Mombasa
Ivory Smuggling When I was a child I would climb down the Ras Serani cliffs at Mombasa at low tide to swim and forage on the revealed coral reef. There you could find chunks of ivory obviously thrown overboard from dhows when apprehended by customs boats. The Arab...