More Stories from East Africa's past for you to enjoy
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...
Baboons
In 1952 I lived in Tanganyika with my missionary parents. We lived rough, setting up tents in a forested peninsula on the shores of lake Victoria. The area had recently been opened to homesteaders and hundreds of Sukuma people were in the process of clearing trees and...
New Old Africa blogger!
Hey Friends, After 15 years I am retiring from my teaching post here a Houghton College. It has been a great job and I have enjoyed the hundreds of students who have patiently listened to my anthropological stores about Africa. I have especially enjoyed the spring...
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...
Christine Nicholls’ Blog, 11 June 2012
We have just had four days of celebrations to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, her sixty years on the throne. Of course there were many mentions of Kenya during the pageants, because that is where Elizabeth ascended the throne. She was at Treetops the night her...
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...
Farewell to Conrad
In our June-July issue of Old Africa we ran a short piece in our Mwishowe column about Conrad, a small boy born in Kenya in 1956 who died less than two years later. The story reflected the pain, shared by many, who have lost children while living in Africa. The story...
Memories of Katungulu – Part 2
Snakes, bats and drinking water. After our amazing escape from the whirling waterspout, we arrived at our house at the AIM mission at Katungulu. Mom, who has always struggled with seasickness, plopped down on her bed to recover. Staring at her from the corner near her...
Memories of Katungulu
Malaria, hyenas and a waterspout At our last family reunion in 1999 with my mom and dad still present, we (now seven children) recounted many of our childhood experiences. My memories of our first years at Katungulu in Tanganyika were stimulated by my older brother...
In Praise of Overlanders All
In noting with interest my fellow bloggers’ fascinating overland experiences, I was reminded of my overland days. In the 1950s we ran an overland campsite in the grounds of our current Hardy, Langata house, dealing with two or three north or southbound truckloads of...
Crocodile Tales
I remember going on safari with my dad in the early 1960s to Baringo where he checked on the new fish-processing plant by the Roberts’ campsite. At night with lights shining, the muddy brown water looked like a parking lot with all the reflected crocodile’s eyes as...
We Design them to Break
Arriving in Nairobi overland in the mid 1950s, I got a job as spares manager with Rootes Ltd, a British motor company that manufactured Commer, Humber, Hillman and Singer cars. Our average monthly sales were one Commer van and two private cars. Some time later a...
The Oriana Wilson Trail
Emma Taylor, an Old Africa reader, is looking for help from other Old Africa fans. Her friend is researching the life of Oriana Wilson, the widow of the Antarctic explorer, Dr Edward Wilson who died with Scott in 1912. The Antarctic may seem rather a long way from...
Work Permits Galore
I thought the attached photo might be of interest to any unfortunate expat who is having difficulty being granted and/or affording a Kenyan work permit at the present time. The attached photo was taken in Nairobi’s Industrial Area 50 years ago. Yours truly is sitting...
Navigating the Nile – Part 2
As I found more of my dad’s notes, I discovered some other interesting facts concerning the amazing Nile River, which flows north while going through the various African countries from its source in Jinja, Uganda. It made me think that when we take time to discover...
Two to Loo
I hope the following anecdote will be of interest to Old Africa readers. Firstly, because it did happen in Africa about 50 years ago in the Northern Rift Valley province and secondly because I use it to bolster one of my obsessions; after a lifetime spent in being...
Christine Nicholls’ Blog, 9 May 2012
I was interested to read about Mombasa Golf Club in your April/May issue. I lived in Mombasa as a child (my father, Kit Metcalfe, was head of Mombasa Primary School just above the golf course) and at low tide we went snorkelling at the foot of the cliffs below the...