by Christine Nicholls | Feb 22, 2016 | Christine Nicholls
An Eccentric East African Hotelier If you crossed the Kenya border into Uganda in the 1940s you came across a rather dilapidated building with a faded tin roof, half a mile from the border, at Tororo. On a board it announced itself as a bar: ‘Prop.: H.H....
by Christine Nicholls | Jan 19, 2016 | Christine Nicholls
The First European Schools in Kenya On reaching Nairobi in 1900 the Uganda Railway set up its own school there for the children of its white workers, in a corrugated iron shed near Nairobi station. The first school for European children in Nairobi was set up by the...
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...
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