by Christine Nicholls | Nov 28, 2023 | Christine Nicholls
JW Arthur, Missionary: An Early Supporter of African Interests in Kenya John William Arthur, born in 1881, a medical doctor trained in Glasgow, joined the Church of Scotland Mission in Kenya in 1906. He was posted to the Kikuyu mission, where he arrived on 1 January...
by Christine Nicholls | Oct 12, 2023 | Christine Nicholls
The Other John Paterson Many of us have heard of the John Patterson who was involved in overcoming the man- eating lions of Tsavo. But there was another man of the same name who had an important, if not so spectacular role. The other John Paterson brought both coffee...
by Christine Nicholls | Jul 24, 2023 | Christine Nicholls
Kenya’s Legion of Frontiersmen The worldwide Legion of Frontiersmen, with a branch in Kenya, was a voluntary, unofficial military organisation not always tolerated by governments. It originated at the turn of the twentieth century during the Boer War in South Africa....
by Christine Nicholls | Jun 8, 2023 | Christine Nicholls
Ivory Poaching in the Lado Enclave Africans and Arabs were not the only ivory poachers in early East Africa. European hunters probably poached far more ivory than Africans and Arabs. Their favoured hunting ground was the Lado enclave, a triangle of land bordering...
by Christine Nicholls | Apr 1, 2023 | Christine Nicholls
Egerton: the Lord, the Farm, the College and the University As a third son, Maurice Egerton never expected to inherit the Barony of Tatton and the Tatton Park estate in Cheshire with its grand residence, Tatton Hall. But his eldest brother William died in infancy and...
by Christine Nicholls | Feb 1, 2023 | Christine Nicholls
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...
by admin | Nov 30, 2022 | Christine Nicholls
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...
by Christine Nicholls | Oct 1, 2022 | Christine Nicholls
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...
by Shel Arensen | Aug 17, 2022 | Shel Arensen
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...
by Christine Nicholls | Aug 9, 2022 | Christine Nicholls
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...
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