Russian Officer with King Menelik’s Army

Ethiopia Through Russian Eyes; Country in Transition 1896–1898 by Alexander Bulatovich, translated & edited by Richard Seltzer (Red Sea Press, 2000). Reviewed by Cynthia Salvadori Despite its bland title, this is the most important book on the history of eastern...

Missionaries Murdered at Golbanti

1886 Maasai warriors, armed with long heavy spears and terrible clubs, met Methodist missionaries, John and Annie Houghton, just outside the stockade of their mission station at Golbanti on the Tana River. A second group of Maasai joined the first on the open road and...

Herod the Hero

 One tradition for our family is attending the Christmas morning play at the Africa Inland Church at Kijabe, Kenya. The first re-enactment of the Christmas story was probably started by some missionary Sunday school teacher with memories of the annual children’s...

Writing and Publishing Memoirs

We have published two out of three parts of a short memoir from Frank Baker about his time as a motorcycle-despatch rider based in Kilwa, German East Africa during World War I. The final instalment is scheduled to appear in the February-March 2009 issue of Old Africa...
Sweet Potatoes for Thanksgiving in Tanganyika

Sweet Potatoes for Thanksgiving in Tanganyika

Tomorrow is American Thanksgiving, a holiday to remember all the good things God has given to us, and normally celebrated with family around a table groaning under a turkey dinner with all the trimmings. I’m in the USA this year and I’ve bought the turkey and my wife...

Telephones and Blogs

I grew up in Kenya in a house without a telephone. It was a big day when KP&T brought phone lines to the Kijabe mission. The phone at my parents’ Kesho offices was 12Y7. To make a call required whirling a handle and shouting for the operator in Naivasha....