by Jon Arensen | Jul 17, 2012 | Jon Arensen
Birds are an integral part of the African scenery. When I think back over the many years I lived in Africa I recall many aural images. In my head I hear the piercing call of the African fish eagle, the raucous squawk of the Hadada ibis and the booming sound of the...
by admin | Jul 17, 2012 | Dick Hedges
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...
by admin | Jul 17, 2012 | Elaine Barnett
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...
by Jon Arensen | Jul 3, 2012 | Jon Arensen
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...
by Jon Arensen | Jul 3, 2012 | Jon Arensen
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...
by admin | Jun 27, 2012 | Dick Hedges
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...
by Christine Nicholls | Jun 18, 2012 | Christine Nicholls
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...
by admin | Jun 14, 2012 | Dick Hedges
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...
by Shel Arensen | Jun 12, 2012 | Shel Arensen, Uncategorized
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...
by admin | Jun 11, 2012 | Elaine Barnett
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...
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