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...
by Christine Nicholls | Nov 22, 2015 | Christine Nicholls
Firebrand Editor of the Kenya Press: Harold George Robertson (‘Rab the Rhymer’) From the age of ten in the 1950s I was an avid daily reader of the Mombasa Times and loved its crossword. So I was very interested to come across some details of one of its former...
by Christine Nicholls | Oct 19, 2015 | Christine Nicholls
I’d like to return to the subject of Vladimir Verbi (see my blogs of February and December 2013), the missionary who shot his mother-in-law in the Taita Hills in 1941. To recap, Verbi was having trouble with his second wife, Lascelles, and forbade her going to a party...
by Christine Nicholls | Sep 28, 2015 | Christine Nicholls
My last blogs have been concerned with the role of European women in Kenya, particularly in World War 2. It has become clear that a leading role was played by Lady Sidney Farrar. Who was she? She was the daughter of the 7th Earl of Buckinghamshire, who boasted the...
by Christine Nicholls | Aug 29, 2015 | Christine Nicholls
As troops flocked into Kenya to defend the country from possible Italian invasion from Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in the north, so Kenya’s women rushed to help the war effort. Up-country towns such as Nanyuki became gorged with South African troops, and its hotel, the...
by Christine Nicholls | Jul 21, 2015 | Christine Nicholls
What Happened to the Education of European Children in World War 2 in Kenya? Hazel MacGregor (née Kempton, of K Boat Yard in Mombasa) remembers the day war was declared in 1939, when she was ten years old. The European Grocery Shop in Mombasa was run by a German...
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