Childhood Memories of Colonial East Africa 1920 ~ 1963 edited by Joan Considine & John Rawlins
FOREWORD
by Elizabeth Watkins
This imaginative anthology of childhood memories of second generation settler children brings home the joys and sorrows of childhood in that outdoor zoo of perpetual Summer that is Kenya. As a second generation white Kenyan myself, and proud great great aunt to a fifth generation, I accord it a warm welcome.
Here are no memoirs of the day I arrived, or how strange and quaint I found my new surroundings. The colours of Africa are the colours which built our minds, the red laterite soil, the dusty brown vegetation before the rains and the vivid greens of flowering trees, and shrubs after them, and – most important – the smiling black faces around us.
And these are the three themes which constantly recur in the memoirs. There was the freedom of playing out of doors over large areas, gardens, farms, official bomas and unofficial ones. There was the wild life, never far from our doorsteps, and sometimes in side the house, the exotic pets and also the opportunity to have domestic ones – ponies were often a necessary means of getting to school or going out to Sunday lunch; one family fielded a polo team. My own mother used a donkey with Kentish-made basket chairs instead of a pram – I still have the silver sugar bowl misshapen when it got stuck on Jacky’s (Jackass) jaws as he helped himself to tea time treat. My sister wore a baby leopard like a cat round her shoulders, and like the cats, it purred loudly. When some recently arrived visitor said to her; “what a life-like toy you have, little girl,” the leopard took one bound on to his shoulders. He fainted and cam round to see three horrid little girls laughing themselves silly as they comforted the leopard.
Thirdly, the memoirs contain recognition of the ever patient African who surrounded us, so much less admonitory than parent or governess, so able to make bows and arrows or whittle a whistle, so knowing of which leaf would take away which sting, what fruit was edible, what twig would make a tooth brush, so willing to let us “help” in whatever job he was doing. Those who stayed on in Kenya have mostly bridged the culture gap in a way which would have been impossible for their parents.
There was the down side of course; children had to go to school. Where school was unreachable, several families clubbed together to share a governess, or a mother ran a mini-school, but the day came – often as early as seven – when boarding school was necessary. One contributor had to travel five days to school, many had to travel for two days, and distance made the separation all the harder. Bullying was rife, and some found the teaching inadequate. Yet school broadened our outlook, bringing new interests, and best of all, new friends, many of these friendships lasting a lifetime. And however hard the partings, it was better than being sent to far away England where life seemed restricted and cold, and in wartime full of shortages.
This book will appeal to all those who grew up in Kenya, but I think it may appeal to many others who did not have that privilege for it captures the magic they have missed
Elizabeth Watkins
(Author of ‘Jomo’s Jailer’, ‘Oscar from Africa’ and of ‘Olga in Kenya’)
ISBN 0-9547249-0-9 and Published by BONGO BOOKS - Click Here for a web link.
Joan and John are embarking on a sequel to “Childhood Memories”, to be aprtly named “Further Memories of Colonial East Africa 1920-63″, and they are looking for contributions from anyone who grew up in East Africa during this unique time in the continent’s history.
Twilight of the Bwanas by Gordon Dyus. an account of life in East Africa during the colonial period.
Gordon Dyus was at Mombasa Primary (then the European School) 1940-42.
click below to view pages & reviews
Twilight of the Bwanas
The Slope of Kongwa Hill a Boy’s Tale of Africa by Anthony Edwards
Coming-of-age autobiographical novel recounts adventure-rich adolescence in late-Colonial Tanganyika
Almost 60 years ago, an asthmatic, 9-year-old English boy sat alone on a train at Dar es Salaam’s station in Tanganyika (now Tanzania), wondering and worrying about his immediate future. He was bound for Kongwa School, a remote co-ed boarding school for European children located in an arid outback region, home to the Wagogo tribe, but otherwise undeveloped.
Thus begins the brilliant debut novel by Salt Spring Island writer Anthony ‘Tony’ Edwards. Based in large part on Edwards’ own experiences and those of his classmates at Kongwa, THE SLOPE OF KONGWA HILL: A BOY’S TALE OF AFRICA is a fascinating account of the toughness, discipline, sometimes the brutality of British boarding school life, and its concurrence with the ever-present danger from living in East Africa’s bundu. Fights and beatings contrast with the excitement of animal and reptile confrontations, torrential storms, locust infestation and other adventures. A terrifying encounter with a black mamba, running away into the bush, hunting for game for the school’s meat supply, a narrow escape from lionesses, Boy Scout camp-outs, and a charming forbidden romance during the central character’s coming-of-age, combine in a kaleidoscope of never-to-be-repeated experiences, recounted with passion and, at times, delightful humour.
“The happy and not-so-happy times are faithfully remembered and the setting of the great plains of central Tanganyika – in an era before television, cell phones, reliable electricity supply or decent transport – makes for a book that one cannot put down,” writes Graeme Berry, an alumnus of that place and times.
www.slopeofkongwahill.com
Books by Kevin Patience
Kevin Patience writes books about East Africa’s history. These include:
A Kenya Childhood
Elspeth Huxley: A Biography
Red Strangers: The White Tribe of Kenya
NEW Book from the Jewell family ~ On Call in Africa
www.oncallinafrica.com
Some reflections on the published book by Christine Nicholls and Anne Samson
A unique and fascinating combination of personal memoirs, corroborated by official war diaries, richly illustrated with personal photographs of events 1910-1932 in East Africa. These memoirs of Dr Norman Jewell provide an intriguing account of the life of a young doctor working for the Colonial Medical Services starting in the Seychelles in 1910. After four idyllic years, Norman joined WW1 in East Africa; he was posted to Kisumu on Lake Victoria as a Captain in the British Army and then to the Field Ambulance unit. This took him all over British and German East Africa via circuitous routes and battlefield skirmishes chasing the elusive, undefeated German commander General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck. Aside from the risk of injury and death from the battlefields, he faced hunger, recurrent malaria and dysentery attacks. The supply chain was fraught with difficulties due to the vast distances of walking it took to deliver goods. Mention is made of the Pike report which exposed the poor management of the Medical Service command. After a particularly bad bout of malaria in late1917, Norman spent six weeks convalescing in the Seychelles where he met his young daughter for the first time. Returning to East Africa he rejoined the Ambulance unit in the Lindi area where the pursuit of Von Lettow-Vorbek continued through the southern part of German East Africa (now Tanzania). He was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry in 1917 and continued to serve in the front line until the end of the war.He returned to civilian life as a doctor in the Colonial Medical services in Kisumu and was confronted by the Spanish Flu pandemic. The story also encompasses his escape, while on leave in 1920, from assassination during the Bloody Sunday events in Dublin. Norman recounts the development of medicine in the young colony, the management of epidemics and gives descriptions of the people and places he encountered while working in Mombasa, Nakuru and Nairobi until 1932.The third part of the book is a short biography of his wife, Sydney Auchinleck, a published poet at sixteen years and the first woman to graduate in chemistry from Trinity College, Dublin. It describes the early years of women's higher education in Ireland, her frustrated desire to become an engineer and follows what happened to their children.This memoir and the war diary transcripts are a timely contribution to the commemoration of the centenary of WW1.
FOREWORD
by Elizabeth Watkins
This imaginative anthology of childhood memories of second generation settler children brings home the joys and sorrows of childhood in that outdoor zoo of perpetual Summer that is Kenya. As a second generation white Kenyan myself, and proud great great aunt to a fifth generation, I accord it a warm welcome.
Here are no memoirs of the day I arrived, or how strange and quaint I found my new surroundings. The colours of Africa are the colours which built our minds, the red laterite soil, the dusty brown vegetation before the rains and the vivid greens of flowering trees, and shrubs after them, and – most important – the smiling black faces around us.
And these are the three themes which constantly recur in the memoirs. There was the freedom of playing out of doors over large areas, gardens, farms, official bomas and unofficial ones. There was the wild life, never far from our doorsteps, and sometimes in side the house, the exotic pets and also the opportunity to have domestic ones – ponies were often a necessary means of getting to school or going out to Sunday lunch; one family fielded a polo team. My own mother used a donkey with Kentish-made basket chairs instead of a pram – I still have the silver sugar bowl misshapen when it got stuck on Jacky’s (Jackass) jaws as he helped himself to tea time treat. My sister wore a baby leopard like a cat round her shoulders, and like the cats, it purred loudly. When some recently arrived visitor said to her; “what a life-like toy you have, little girl,” the leopard took one bound on to his shoulders. He fainted and cam round to see three horrid little girls laughing themselves silly as they comforted the leopard.
Thirdly, the memoirs contain recognition of the ever patient African who surrounded us, so much less admonitory than parent or governess, so able to make bows and arrows or whittle a whistle, so knowing of which leaf would take away which sting, what fruit was edible, what twig would make a tooth brush, so willing to let us “help” in whatever job he was doing. Those who stayed on in Kenya have mostly bridged the culture gap in a way which would have been impossible for their parents.
There was the down side of course; children had to go to school. Where school was unreachable, several families clubbed together to share a governess, or a mother ran a mini-school, but the day came – often as early as seven – when boarding school was necessary. One contributor had to travel five days to school, many had to travel for two days, and distance made the separation all the harder. Bullying was rife, and some found the teaching inadequate. Yet school broadened our outlook, bringing new interests, and best of all, new friends, many of these friendships lasting a lifetime. And however hard the partings, it was better than being sent to far away England where life seemed restricted and cold, and in wartime full of shortages.
This book will appeal to all those who grew up in Kenya, but I think it may appeal to many others who did not have that privilege for it captures the magic they have missed
Elizabeth Watkins
(Author of ‘Jomo’s Jailer’, ‘Oscar from Africa’ and of ‘Olga in Kenya’)
ISBN 0-9547249-0-9 and Published by BONGO BOOKS - Click Here for a web link.
Joan and John are embarking on a sequel to “Childhood Memories”, to be aprtly named “Further Memories of Colonial East Africa 1920-63″, and they are looking for contributions from anyone who grew up in East Africa during this unique time in the continent’s history.
Twilight of the Bwanas by Gordon Dyus. an account of life in East Africa during the colonial period.
Gordon Dyus was at Mombasa Primary (then the European School) 1940-42.
click below to view pages & reviews
Twilight of the Bwanas
The Slope of Kongwa Hill a Boy’s Tale of Africa by Anthony Edwards
Coming-of-age autobiographical novel recounts adventure-rich adolescence in late-Colonial Tanganyika
Almost 60 years ago, an asthmatic, 9-year-old English boy sat alone on a train at Dar es Salaam’s station in Tanganyika (now Tanzania), wondering and worrying about his immediate future. He was bound for Kongwa School, a remote co-ed boarding school for European children located in an arid outback region, home to the Wagogo tribe, but otherwise undeveloped.
Thus begins the brilliant debut novel by Salt Spring Island writer Anthony ‘Tony’ Edwards. Based in large part on Edwards’ own experiences and those of his classmates at Kongwa, THE SLOPE OF KONGWA HILL: A BOY’S TALE OF AFRICA is a fascinating account of the toughness, discipline, sometimes the brutality of British boarding school life, and its concurrence with the ever-present danger from living in East Africa’s bundu. Fights and beatings contrast with the excitement of animal and reptile confrontations, torrential storms, locust infestation and other adventures. A terrifying encounter with a black mamba, running away into the bush, hunting for game for the school’s meat supply, a narrow escape from lionesses, Boy Scout camp-outs, and a charming forbidden romance during the central character’s coming-of-age, combine in a kaleidoscope of never-to-be-repeated experiences, recounted with passion and, at times, delightful humour.
“The happy and not-so-happy times are faithfully remembered and the setting of the great plains of central Tanganyika – in an era before television, cell phones, reliable electricity supply or decent transport – makes for a book that one cannot put down,” writes Graeme Berry, an alumnus of that place and times.
www.slopeofkongwahill.com
Books by Kevin Patience
Kevin Patience writes books about East Africa’s history. These include:
- Shipwrecks and Salvage on the East African Coast. 2006
- Zanzibar: Slavery and the Royal Navy. 2001
- Zanzibar: Slavery and the Royal Navy
- Königsberg: A German East Africa Raider. 1997 / 2001.
- Konigsberg : A German East African Raider
- Zanzibar and the Bububu Railway. 1995 / 2001
- ZANZIBAR AND THE BUBUBU RAILWAY
- Steam twilight: The Last Years of Steam on Kenya Railways. 1996.
- Steam Twilight – the Last Years of Steam on Kenya Railways
- Zanzibar and the Shortest War in History. 1994.
- Zanzibar and the shortest war in history
- Steam in East Africa: A Pictorial history of the Railways in East Africa, 1893-1976.
- STEAM IN EAST AFRICA
A Kenya Childhood
Elspeth Huxley: A Biography
Red Strangers: The White Tribe of Kenya
NEW Book from the Jewell family ~ On Call in Africa
www.oncallinafrica.com
Some reflections on the published book by Christine Nicholls and Anne Samson
A unique and fascinating combination of personal memoirs, corroborated by official war diaries, richly illustrated with personal photographs of events 1910-1932 in East Africa. These memoirs of Dr Norman Jewell provide an intriguing account of the life of a young doctor working for the Colonial Medical Services starting in the Seychelles in 1910. After four idyllic years, Norman joined WW1 in East Africa; he was posted to Kisumu on Lake Victoria as a Captain in the British Army and then to the Field Ambulance unit. This took him all over British and German East Africa via circuitous routes and battlefield skirmishes chasing the elusive, undefeated German commander General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck. Aside from the risk of injury and death from the battlefields, he faced hunger, recurrent malaria and dysentery attacks. The supply chain was fraught with difficulties due to the vast distances of walking it took to deliver goods. Mention is made of the Pike report which exposed the poor management of the Medical Service command. After a particularly bad bout of malaria in late1917, Norman spent six weeks convalescing in the Seychelles where he met his young daughter for the first time. Returning to East Africa he rejoined the Ambulance unit in the Lindi area where the pursuit of Von Lettow-Vorbek continued through the southern part of German East Africa (now Tanzania). He was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry in 1917 and continued to serve in the front line until the end of the war.He returned to civilian life as a doctor in the Colonial Medical services in Kisumu and was confronted by the Spanish Flu pandemic. The story also encompasses his escape, while on leave in 1920, from assassination during the Bloody Sunday events in Dublin. Norman recounts the development of medicine in the young colony, the management of epidemics and gives descriptions of the people and places he encountered while working in Mombasa, Nakuru and Nairobi until 1932.The third part of the book is a short biography of his wife, Sydney Auchinleck, a published poet at sixteen years and the first woman to graduate in chemistry from Trinity College, Dublin. It describes the early years of women's higher education in Ireland, her frustrated desire to become an engineer and follows what happened to their children.This memoir and the war diary transcripts are a timely contribution to the commemoration of the centenary of WW1.
- The book is now available in Kindle https://amzn.com/B01GFAM27C and iBook https://itun.es/be/ZaVQcb.l formats
- Black and white photo collection is available on the Mary Evans Picture Library http://www.maryevans.com/lb.php?ref=36057
- facebook page www.fb/oncallinafrica