TBT Curfew Lifted edition
- Thread starter Meria
- Start date
The story of Salim bin Khalfan, Liwali of Mombasa (1884 - 1912)
In the picture, he is seated at the centre.
it's important to note that the Omanis ruled Mombasa from 1698 and had their administrative headquarters in Stone Town, Zanzibar.
Mombasa was a prominent town under the Zanzibar administration and needed to be governed by a suitable person. The Sultan, Barghash bin Said, appointed fellow Omani, Salim bin Khalfan as Liwali (Governor) of Mombasa in 1884.
Salim served as Mombasa’s Liwali up until 1912, with a short break in 1888. He presided over barazas, where views of the people were heard and considered. Once a year he travelled to Zanzibar to report to the Sultan and to receive his reward for his services.
His remuneration depended on whether or not the Sultan was pleased with his performance. Overall, his ability to handle difficult situations is one of the attributes that contributed to his long tenure.
His hard work and legacy didn't go unnoticed. one of Mombasa's first roads in the 20th century was named Salim Road which was later renamed in honour of Gamal Abdel Nasser Road who was the Second President of Egypt.
Cairo was the first capital to host Kenyan liberation fighters such as Tom Mboya, James Gichuru, Oginga Odinga, Joseph Murumbi and other members of the KANU and KADU political parties.
In the picture, he is seated at the centre.
it's important to note that the Omanis ruled Mombasa from 1698 and had their administrative headquarters in Stone Town, Zanzibar.
Mombasa was a prominent town under the Zanzibar administration and needed to be governed by a suitable person. The Sultan, Barghash bin Said, appointed fellow Omani, Salim bin Khalfan as Liwali (Governor) of Mombasa in 1884.
Salim served as Mombasa’s Liwali up until 1912, with a short break in 1888. He presided over barazas, where views of the people were heard and considered. Once a year he travelled to Zanzibar to report to the Sultan and to receive his reward for his services.
His remuneration depended on whether or not the Sultan was pleased with his performance. Overall, his ability to handle difficult situations is one of the attributes that contributed to his long tenure.
His hard work and legacy didn't go unnoticed. one of Mombasa's first roads in the 20th century was named Salim Road which was later renamed in honour of Gamal Abdel Nasser Road who was the Second President of Egypt.
Cairo was the first capital to host Kenyan liberation fighters such as Tom Mboya, James Gichuru, Oginga Odinga, Joseph Murumbi and other members of the KANU and KADU political parties.
Baluchi Community of Mombasa
The first crop of Baluchi immigrants came to Mombasa in the 17th century from present-day Iran. They were hired soldiers sent to fight and conquer Mombasa (from Portugal) in the name of the Sultan of Oman.
Once the conquest was done, they stayed on and settled in a place which they named Makadara tul Rahman. This is the area in Mombasa now known as Makadara
Due to this political relationship, many members of the Baluchi community who lived in Makran joined the special forces branch of the Omani military. Thus, Baluchi soldiers were hired and tactfully took on the Portuguese who took refuge within the fort by surrounding it and cutting off their food and water supply. Slowly, the Portuguese died from hunger and disease. In 1698 the Baluchi soldiers successfully took control of the fort in the name of the Sultan.
The soldiers settled along the East African coast and continued military work for Saif bin Sultan Al Yarubi, the reigning Sultan, helping him consolidate his rule in the region. They maintained army posts in the major centers of Mombasa, Dar-es-Salaam, Zanzibar and Pemba. Soon after the Baluchi-Omani migration, families followed suit, and left Balochistan for East Africa. They hoped to capitalize on the thriving maritime trade and better their lives. With this new crop of people, cultures interacted and there were marriages between the Baluchi, the Waswahili and the Arabs.
When British rule in Mombasa began in the late 19th century, the Al Busaidi had a lot to gain as both empires had a long-standing relationship. The British put an end to the Mazrui claim of rulership and administered the coast with the help of the Al Busaidi. In return, the Sultan handed over control of Fort Jesus and disbanded his Baluchi garrison. The British made provisions for the Baluchi soldiers to acquire land in Mombasa. The soldiers were first settled just off Treasury Square behind Standard Bank, but in 1914 they were resettled on land near the Mbaruk Mosque behind the Old Town. They named the place Makadara tul Rahman which means “The abode provided by Allah the Beneficent.” The road that runs through this region took on the name Makadara Road and has remained so to date.
The first crop of Baluchi immigrants came to Mombasa in the 17th century from present-day Iran. They were hired soldiers sent to fight and conquer Mombasa (from Portugal) in the name of the Sultan of Oman.
Once the conquest was done, they stayed on and settled in a place which they named Makadara tul Rahman. This is the area in Mombasa now known as Makadara
Due to this political relationship, many members of the Baluchi community who lived in Makran joined the special forces branch of the Omani military. Thus, Baluchi soldiers were hired and tactfully took on the Portuguese who took refuge within the fort by surrounding it and cutting off their food and water supply. Slowly, the Portuguese died from hunger and disease. In 1698 the Baluchi soldiers successfully took control of the fort in the name of the Sultan.
The soldiers settled along the East African coast and continued military work for Saif bin Sultan Al Yarubi, the reigning Sultan, helping him consolidate his rule in the region. They maintained army posts in the major centers of Mombasa, Dar-es-Salaam, Zanzibar and Pemba. Soon after the Baluchi-Omani migration, families followed suit, and left Balochistan for East Africa. They hoped to capitalize on the thriving maritime trade and better their lives. With this new crop of people, cultures interacted and there were marriages between the Baluchi, the Waswahili and the Arabs.
When British rule in Mombasa began in the late 19th century, the Al Busaidi had a lot to gain as both empires had a long-standing relationship. The British put an end to the Mazrui claim of rulership and administered the coast with the help of the Al Busaidi. In return, the Sultan handed over control of Fort Jesus and disbanded his Baluchi garrison. The British made provisions for the Baluchi soldiers to acquire land in Mombasa. The soldiers were first settled just off Treasury Square behind Standard Bank, but in 1914 they were resettled on land near the Mbaruk Mosque behind the Old Town. They named the place Makadara tul Rahman which means “The abode provided by Allah the Beneficent.” The road that runs through this region took on the name Makadara Road and has remained so to date.
Nairobi National Museum
Built in 1929, Nairobi National Museum is the flagship museum of NMK, housing celebrated collections of Kenya’s history, nature, culture and contemporary art.
3 must-see objects at the museum:
1. Ahmed the Elephant
Come face to face with the most famous elephant of Africa. See the skeleton and a lifesize model of Ahmed, who was known for his large tusks and put under 24 hour protection by President Kenyatta.
2. The Turkana boy
The Turkana boy is the most complete skeleton found of an early hominid. It is 1.6 million years old.
3. The Joy Adamson gallery
Learn more about the iconic illustrator, conservationist and author, and explore her paintings celebrating Kenya's flora, fauna and people.
Built in 1929, Nairobi National Museum is the flagship museum of NMK, housing celebrated collections of Kenya’s history, nature, culture and contemporary art.
3 must-see objects at the museum:
1. Ahmed the Elephant
Come face to face with the most famous elephant of Africa. See the skeleton and a lifesize model of Ahmed, who was known for his large tusks and put under 24 hour protection by President Kenyatta.
2. The Turkana boy
The Turkana boy is the most complete skeleton found of an early hominid. It is 1.6 million years old.
3. The Joy Adamson gallery
Learn more about the iconic illustrator, conservationist and author, and explore her paintings celebrating Kenya's flora, fauna and people.
Nairobi Gallery
Built in 1913, Nairobi Gallery was the Old PC’s office building, fondly referred to as ‘Hatches, Matches and Dispatches’ because of the births, marriages and deaths that were recorded here. Today, the building is a national monument, serves as a museum with temporary art exhibitions, and houses the Murumbi African Heritage Collection. The gallery was gazetted as a national monument on 13th April 1995.
Built in 1913, Nairobi Gallery was the Old PC’s office building, fondly referred to as ‘Hatches, Matches and Dispatches’ because of the births, marriages and deaths that were recorded here. Today, the building is a national monument, serves as a museum with temporary art exhibitions, and houses the Murumbi African Heritage Collection. The gallery was gazetted as a national monument on 13th April 1995.
Hyrax Hill Museum
Located within Nakuru town, Hyrax Hill Museum tells the story of the lifestyle of seasonal settlements of prehistoric people from at least 3,000 years ago. The Museum is a former farmhouse, ceded to the museum in 1965 by the Late Mr. A. Selfe. Hyrx Hill was gazetted as an archaeological site on 13th April 1995.
Located within Nakuru town, Hyrax Hill Museum tells the story of the lifestyle of seasonal settlements of prehistoric people from at least 3,000 years ago. The Museum is a former farmhouse, ceded to the museum in 1965 by the Late Mr. A. Selfe. Hyrx Hill was gazetted as an archaeological site on 13th April 1995.
Ancient name of Africa
Before the European settled for the word Africa, the continent was called many other names. They include Corphye, Ortigia,Libya, and Ethiopia ,Alkebulan
Other names such as the land of Ham (Ham means dark skins), mother of mankind, the garden of Eden, Kingdoms in the sky, and the land of cush or kesh (referring to the Cushites who were ancient Ethiopian) were used.
No one knows the source of the names for sure. However, the theories below shed some light on how this second largest continent got its new name.
Roman theory
Some scholars believe that the word originated from the Romans. Romans discovered a land opposite the Mediterranean and named it after the Berber tribe residing within the Carnage area, presently referred to as Tunisia. The tribe's name was Afri.
Weather theory
Some believe that the name was coiled from the continent's climate. Deriving from aphrike, a Greek word that means a land free from cold and horror. A variation of the Roman word aprica, which means sunny, or even the Phoenician word afar, which means dust.
Africus Theory
This claims that the continent derived its name from Africus. Africus is a Yemenite chieftain who invaded the northern part in the second millennium BC,It is argued that he settled on his conquered land and named it Afrikyah.
Phoenician Theory
Another school of thought suggests that the name is derived from two Phoenician words friqi and pharika. The words mean corns and fruits when translated. Hypothetically the Phoenician christened the continent as the land of corns and fruits.
Alkebu-lan “mother of mankind” or “garden of Eden”.” Alkebulan is the oldest and the only word of indigenous origin. It was used by the Moors,Nubians, Numidians,Khart-Haddans (Carthagenians) and Ethiopians.
There is little or no certainty on the source or meaning Africa. Several scholars have tried to explain the origin of the word, but none is convincingly correct.
Before the European settled for the word Africa, the continent was called many other names. They include Corphye, Ortigia,Libya, and Ethiopia ,Alkebulan
Other names such as the land of Ham (Ham means dark skins), mother of mankind, the garden of Eden, Kingdoms in the sky, and the land of cush or kesh (referring to the Cushites who were ancient Ethiopian) were used.
No one knows the source of the names for sure. However, the theories below shed some light on how this second largest continent got its new name.
Roman theory
Some scholars believe that the word originated from the Romans. Romans discovered a land opposite the Mediterranean and named it after the Berber tribe residing within the Carnage area, presently referred to as Tunisia. The tribe's name was Afri.
Weather theory
Some believe that the name was coiled from the continent's climate. Deriving from aphrike, a Greek word that means a land free from cold and horror. A variation of the Roman word aprica, which means sunny, or even the Phoenician word afar, which means dust.
Africus Theory
This claims that the continent derived its name from Africus. Africus is a Yemenite chieftain who invaded the northern part in the second millennium BC,It is argued that he settled on his conquered land and named it Afrikyah.
Phoenician Theory
Another school of thought suggests that the name is derived from two Phoenician words friqi and pharika. The words mean corns and fruits when translated. Hypothetically the Phoenician christened the continent as the land of corns and fruits.
Alkebu-lan “mother of mankind” or “garden of Eden”.” Alkebulan is the oldest and the only word of indigenous origin. It was used by the Moors,Nubians, Numidians,Khart-Haddans (Carthagenians) and Ethiopians.
There is little or no certainty on the source or meaning Africa. Several scholars have tried to explain the origin of the word, but none is convincingly correct.
Arthur Aggrey Ochwada (1926-2013)
Pioneering trade unionist, founder of the Trade Union Congress of Kenya
Ochwada was born in Samia in the present-day Busia county in 1926. He served in the British military in a non-combatant role during World War II; he spent time in India, Sri Lanka and Somaliland. On returning to Kenya he briefly worked as a teacher. A founder member of KANU and senior office-holder in the early years of the party before independence, he is best known as an MP and assistant minister from 1969 to 1974. His second wife was Lucy Nyokabi, granddaughter of Jomo Kenyatta, and Ochwada was the cousin of former Vice President Moody Awori.
Ochwada was defeated in 1974 election. He moved to Uganda following the return to power of Milton Obote, a friend from Ochwada’s days in the East African regional assembly in the early 1960s. Ochwada remained in Uganda until Museveni’s National Resistance Movement toppled Obote in 1985. Ochwada was also a friend of the South Sudanese leader, John Garang. The two men met in prison in 1963, when Ochwada was serving a sentence relating to his mismanagement of trade union funds.
Ochwada’s entry into politics and national prominence came about first because of his work in the trade union movement. He moved to Nairobi in the late 1940s and worked as a building sub-contractor, joining the union before quickly heading it. Ochwada’s East African Federation of Building and Construction Workers was part of a trade union movement ripped apart by the British campaign against Mau Mau. The start of the State of Emergency in October 1952 saw widespread arrests of trade union leaders, which in turn created a vacuum filled by a new generation of young, ambitious trade unionists such as Ochwada and Tom Mboya.
At first, Ochwada and Mboya quickly became well known figures within Kenyan politics. In the absence of any nationwide political party for Africans until 1960, the Kenya Federation of Labour led by Mboya was the most important vehicle of African political involvement through much of the 1950s. Ochwada served as Mboya’s deputy and assumed control of the organisation in 1955 & 1956 while Mboya studied in the U.K. and travelled to the U.S.
Ochwada had mistrusted Mboya from the very earliest days of them working together within the KFLand he was clearly envious of the global fame the much more charismatic, dedicated and skilled Mboya enjoyed. Although very much part of the relationship with KFL Ochwada turned against it accusing it of neo-colonialism. He set up a new body to rival the KFL, the Trade Union Congress of Kenya in 1960 – a splinter body which attracted great support from the pro-Odinga faction - before being expelled from the KFL. He and Mboya briefly reconciled – Ochwada served under Mboya as KANU’s general secretary – before they fell out once again. Ochwada’s legal problems then began; he faced trial on unrelated charges before being jailed for misuse of union funds.
Pioneering trade unionist, founder of the Trade Union Congress of Kenya
Ochwada was born in Samia in the present-day Busia county in 1926. He served in the British military in a non-combatant role during World War II; he spent time in India, Sri Lanka and Somaliland. On returning to Kenya he briefly worked as a teacher. A founder member of KANU and senior office-holder in the early years of the party before independence, he is best known as an MP and assistant minister from 1969 to 1974. His second wife was Lucy Nyokabi, granddaughter of Jomo Kenyatta, and Ochwada was the cousin of former Vice President Moody Awori.
Ochwada was defeated in 1974 election. He moved to Uganda following the return to power of Milton Obote, a friend from Ochwada’s days in the East African regional assembly in the early 1960s. Ochwada remained in Uganda until Museveni’s National Resistance Movement toppled Obote in 1985. Ochwada was also a friend of the South Sudanese leader, John Garang. The two men met in prison in 1963, when Ochwada was serving a sentence relating to his mismanagement of trade union funds.
Ochwada’s entry into politics and national prominence came about first because of his work in the trade union movement. He moved to Nairobi in the late 1940s and worked as a building sub-contractor, joining the union before quickly heading it. Ochwada’s East African Federation of Building and Construction Workers was part of a trade union movement ripped apart by the British campaign against Mau Mau. The start of the State of Emergency in October 1952 saw widespread arrests of trade union leaders, which in turn created a vacuum filled by a new generation of young, ambitious trade unionists such as Ochwada and Tom Mboya.
At first, Ochwada and Mboya quickly became well known figures within Kenyan politics. In the absence of any nationwide political party for Africans until 1960, the Kenya Federation of Labour led by Mboya was the most important vehicle of African political involvement through much of the 1950s. Ochwada served as Mboya’s deputy and assumed control of the organisation in 1955 & 1956 while Mboya studied in the U.K. and travelled to the U.S.
Ochwada had mistrusted Mboya from the very earliest days of them working together within the KFLand he was clearly envious of the global fame the much more charismatic, dedicated and skilled Mboya enjoyed. Although very much part of the relationship with KFL Ochwada turned against it accusing it of neo-colonialism. He set up a new body to rival the KFL, the Trade Union Congress of Kenya in 1960 – a splinter body which attracted great support from the pro-Odinga faction - before being expelled from the KFL. He and Mboya briefly reconciled – Ochwada served under Mboya as KANU’s general secretary – before they fell out once again. Ochwada’s legal problems then began; he faced trial on unrelated charges before being jailed for misuse of union funds.
Hilary Boniface Ng'weno (1938-2021)
The first Kenyan editor-in-chief of the Nation newspaper group
Ng’weno is a critically important figure in postcolonial Kenyan history. His life is a reminder of how important the press has been to shaping public debate. Many biographies about Kenyan political leaders have been given special treatment over the past 40-50 years. However, this biography hopes to offer similar treatment to the role of press in shaping political debate.
Hilary Boniface Ng’weno, born on 28 June 1938 in Nairobi, was raised in Muthurwa, a place where his father worked for East African Railways. From St. Peter Cleavers, a place where he began his primary education, he joined Mang’u High School, before studying Physics and Mathematics at Harvard University in the USA, where he married Fleur Arabelle, a French holder of a BSC degree in conservation and former editor of Rainbow magazine. A father of two daughters Amolo and Bettina, Hilary Ng’weno is also considered the father of journalism in Kenya.
In spite of his science-oriented studies, it was at Harvard University that Ng’weno, established, shaped and sharpened his journalism career. As a student, he began writing cyclostyled newsletters, a beginning of his consciousness of racial relationships in the 1960s. On his return to Kenya in 1962, Ng’weno became a reporter, feature writer and columnist with Daily Nation newspaper. Barely two years into his journalism career, at just 26 years of age, Ng’weno became the first indigenous Kenyan editor-in-chief of the Nation Group of newspapers, on 1 June 1964, succeeding Graham Rees. Perhaps his Harvard background, where it appears he met the Aga Khan, the founder of Nation Group, gave him an edge in this young company.
It was during his stint at the Nation that Kenya’s contribution within international press circles was visible. Ng’weno was among the chief speakers at 14th Annual General Assembly of the International Press Institute held in 1965 at Grosvenor House, London, joining British leaders and press figures like Lord Shawcross, Harold Wilson and Cecil King, alongside other leading press figures from Africa, including Enahoro Odinge, Gabriel Makoso and Herbert Unegbu. He delivered a speech on Press Freedom and its threats, and this defined his path in journalism. After the London trip, he quit the Nation in May 1965 and he became a freelance journalist, a platform he used to comment on global events. Re-establishing his global links, Ng’weno joined Harvard University for a second time as a Fellow of Harvard Centre for International Affairs (1968-69), and studied, through a Ford Foundation fellowship, film production and television at Brandeis University USA (1969-70).
Ng’weno’s criticism of Eurocentric approaches might have been an influence of Harvard, a place he not only cyclostyled newsletters to African students in the US but also connected with the Aga Khan, the founder of Nation Media Group in Kenya. As part of his presentation during the 14th Annual General Assembly of the International Press Institute of 1965, Ng’weno advocated for press freedom, and identified three threats to press freedom as: state, courts and ownership or control by expatriates. On his second return to Kenya, Ng’weno launched his own newspaper, The Weekly Review (WR) in February 1975 in a bid to exercise press freedom he had envisioned in 1965. The WR became part of his larger company, Stellascope Ltd, a home to other publications, as a chief editor, including Rainbow (September 1977), Joe magazine, Financial Review, Sports Magazine and Business World. The WR embodied his skepticism of foreign owned newspapers. He felt that foreign ownership of the press promoted Eurocentric concerns, instead of offering an African view of socio-political realities in independent African countries.
He therefore construed that the only newspapers, Nation and Standard, which were owned by expatriates and foreigners, curtailed press freedoms and lacked ‘comprehensive sufficient background information and analysis of weekly events’ within the local realms. Ng’weno’s perception of free press was commingled within the WR. Apart from print media, Ng’weno worked with Kenya Broadcasting Cooperation in 1972, Esso Standard (East Africa) Limited and has also produced documentary films like ‘Makers of the Nation’. He is a recipient of a Rockefeller Award (1977) due to his contribution to journalism. His early connections shaped his path towards the struggle for press freedom
Despite his mild criticism of African governments, he maintained cordial relationships with the governments of the time, a quality attained at Harvard, a foreign place, but where he cyclostyled newsletters to African students. He occupied the middle ground and urged both government and its critics to lower their voices ‘a little so as to hear one another better’. However, this does not mean that political concerns featured less. In fact, the WR was dubbed a political magazine, corroborating its initial purpose to give a ‘comprehensive, unbiased and free interpretation of the many occurrences’. Among the occurrences are liberation heroes in Kenya’s history including Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, Achieng Aneko, Paul Ngei, Bildad Kaggia, Fred Kubai, Tom Mboya, and Kungu Karumba. This candid purpose kept the WR in circulation surviving, sometimes, the turbulent political moments of Moi regime (1978-2002). Perhaps, aware of the WR as a platform for knowledge and opinion (in politics), KANU bought Stellascope Ltd and Nairobi Times in 1983. In 1993 and 1999 he was the Chairman of Kenya Wildlife Service and member of Kenya Revenue Authority respectively, which were perceived as political appointments. Incidentally, in 1999 the WR wound up its publications.
Ng’weno’s global influence was two-fold. First, it ignited his African racial consciousness while at the same time plunged him into journalism. Secondly, global links transformed his perception of local politics and, in equal measure, he used these links as a platform for voicing local politics. Even though the WR closed down in 1999, it enshrined places that Hilary Boniface Ng’weno traversed as a student at Harvard University, and in his career as a journalist. Today, Ng’weno is considered as the father of, and an icon in, journalism in Kenya and Africa.
The first Kenyan editor-in-chief of the Nation newspaper group
Ng’weno is a critically important figure in postcolonial Kenyan history. His life is a reminder of how important the press has been to shaping public debate. Many biographies about Kenyan political leaders have been given special treatment over the past 40-50 years. However, this biography hopes to offer similar treatment to the role of press in shaping political debate.
Hilary Boniface Ng’weno, born on 28 June 1938 in Nairobi, was raised in Muthurwa, a place where his father worked for East African Railways. From St. Peter Cleavers, a place where he began his primary education, he joined Mang’u High School, before studying Physics and Mathematics at Harvard University in the USA, where he married Fleur Arabelle, a French holder of a BSC degree in conservation and former editor of Rainbow magazine. A father of two daughters Amolo and Bettina, Hilary Ng’weno is also considered the father of journalism in Kenya.
In spite of his science-oriented studies, it was at Harvard University that Ng’weno, established, shaped and sharpened his journalism career. As a student, he began writing cyclostyled newsletters, a beginning of his consciousness of racial relationships in the 1960s. On his return to Kenya in 1962, Ng’weno became a reporter, feature writer and columnist with Daily Nation newspaper. Barely two years into his journalism career, at just 26 years of age, Ng’weno became the first indigenous Kenyan editor-in-chief of the Nation Group of newspapers, on 1 June 1964, succeeding Graham Rees. Perhaps his Harvard background, where it appears he met the Aga Khan, the founder of Nation Group, gave him an edge in this young company.
It was during his stint at the Nation that Kenya’s contribution within international press circles was visible. Ng’weno was among the chief speakers at 14th Annual General Assembly of the International Press Institute held in 1965 at Grosvenor House, London, joining British leaders and press figures like Lord Shawcross, Harold Wilson and Cecil King, alongside other leading press figures from Africa, including Enahoro Odinge, Gabriel Makoso and Herbert Unegbu. He delivered a speech on Press Freedom and its threats, and this defined his path in journalism. After the London trip, he quit the Nation in May 1965 and he became a freelance journalist, a platform he used to comment on global events. Re-establishing his global links, Ng’weno joined Harvard University for a second time as a Fellow of Harvard Centre for International Affairs (1968-69), and studied, through a Ford Foundation fellowship, film production and television at Brandeis University USA (1969-70).
Ng’weno’s criticism of Eurocentric approaches might have been an influence of Harvard, a place he not only cyclostyled newsletters to African students in the US but also connected with the Aga Khan, the founder of Nation Media Group in Kenya. As part of his presentation during the 14th Annual General Assembly of the International Press Institute of 1965, Ng’weno advocated for press freedom, and identified three threats to press freedom as: state, courts and ownership or control by expatriates. On his second return to Kenya, Ng’weno launched his own newspaper, The Weekly Review (WR) in February 1975 in a bid to exercise press freedom he had envisioned in 1965. The WR became part of his larger company, Stellascope Ltd, a home to other publications, as a chief editor, including Rainbow (September 1977), Joe magazine, Financial Review, Sports Magazine and Business World. The WR embodied his skepticism of foreign owned newspapers. He felt that foreign ownership of the press promoted Eurocentric concerns, instead of offering an African view of socio-political realities in independent African countries.
He therefore construed that the only newspapers, Nation and Standard, which were owned by expatriates and foreigners, curtailed press freedoms and lacked ‘comprehensive sufficient background information and analysis of weekly events’ within the local realms. Ng’weno’s perception of free press was commingled within the WR. Apart from print media, Ng’weno worked with Kenya Broadcasting Cooperation in 1972, Esso Standard (East Africa) Limited and has also produced documentary films like ‘Makers of the Nation’. He is a recipient of a Rockefeller Award (1977) due to his contribution to journalism. His early connections shaped his path towards the struggle for press freedom
Despite his mild criticism of African governments, he maintained cordial relationships with the governments of the time, a quality attained at Harvard, a foreign place, but where he cyclostyled newsletters to African students. He occupied the middle ground and urged both government and its critics to lower their voices ‘a little so as to hear one another better’. However, this does not mean that political concerns featured less. In fact, the WR was dubbed a political magazine, corroborating its initial purpose to give a ‘comprehensive, unbiased and free interpretation of the many occurrences’. Among the occurrences are liberation heroes in Kenya’s history including Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, Achieng Aneko, Paul Ngei, Bildad Kaggia, Fred Kubai, Tom Mboya, and Kungu Karumba. This candid purpose kept the WR in circulation surviving, sometimes, the turbulent political moments of Moi regime (1978-2002). Perhaps, aware of the WR as a platform for knowledge and opinion (in politics), KANU bought Stellascope Ltd and Nairobi Times in 1983. In 1993 and 1999 he was the Chairman of Kenya Wildlife Service and member of Kenya Revenue Authority respectively, which were perceived as political appointments. Incidentally, in 1999 the WR wound up its publications.
Ng’weno’s global influence was two-fold. First, it ignited his African racial consciousness while at the same time plunged him into journalism. Secondly, global links transformed his perception of local politics and, in equal measure, he used these links as a platform for voicing local politics. Even though the WR closed down in 1999, it enshrined places that Hilary Boniface Ng’weno traversed as a student at Harvard University, and in his career as a journalist. Today, Ng’weno is considered as the father of, and an icon in, journalism in Kenya and Africa.
Daniel Owino Misiani (1940-2006)
The father of Benga music, taking multilingual lyrics to a global audience
Daniel Owino Misiani was born 22nd February 1940 in a village called Nyamagong near Shirati in the Mara region of Tanzania, near the Kenyan border. Misiani enjoyed a childhood of playing and singing in Luo in school and church choirs, and as a teen he played percussion in a local acoustic group.
His parents, however, on religious grounds disapproved of him pursuing a musical career, and Misiani’s first guitar was destroyed by his deeply devout Christian father. Irrespective, Misiani pursued a career in music and travelled around Tanzania and Kenya. His music career had humble origins as a travelling guitarist, playing at funerals, social gatherings and bars in the Luo homeland of Kenya’s Nyanza province. In 1964 he settled in Nairobi.
In Nairobi, Misiani drew inspiration from Luo traditional music and began to pioneer the benga genre, replacing the traditional nyatiti with electric guitars, retaining the fast tempos he had enjoyed at home. Inspired by the success of Nairobi-based musicians such as Daudi Kabaka, Misiani made his first electric guitar recordings in 1965. Soon after, he formed a band to record under, named the Shirati Luo Voice (later to become Orchestra D.O.7, and in 1975: Shirati Jazz).
Shirati Jazz rose to the peak of its fame in the mid 1970s releasing an endless string of 45 rpm seven-inch singles such as Piny Lichina, Kiseru and Simon Agira, recording these various songs in Luo and Swahili. These were all produced under a variety of different labels, the most significant being Kanindo, Hundwe, Sunguru and Kung Fu.
D.O. Misiani came to criticise the former Presidents of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta, Daniel arap Moi and Mwai Kibaki during their leaderships of the country. Whereas the government sponsored choirs which composed music that helped celebrate the postcolonial state and maintain the status quo, musicians such as Misiani challenged these ideas. In his songs he called upon the presidents to answer controversial topics. During the early 1970s, in the song Kalamindi, Misiani criticised Kenyatta’s development policy which he perceived to perpetuate class and regional inequalities.
During the struggle for multiparty democracy in Kenya after the death of the then Foreign Minister Robert Ouko, Misiani was extradited by Moi’s government for ‘fuelling discontent’ in his music. After the December 2002 elections in Kenya, Misiani was arrested after releasing Bim men Bim (a baboon will remain a baboon). His song was perceived as an anti-government jibe which allegedly suggested that as Kibaki had been in Moi’s Government as Vice President he would not bring much change.
Misiani took an interest in political issues across the world, including coups, assassinations and ethnic conflicts. The subjects of his songs included events in Kenya, Congo, Egypt, South Africa, Somalia and Liberia. Misiani scorned leaders such as Idi Amin and had no problem in ridiculing leaders in Africa and across the world. In the song Wayuak ni Piny (We cry for the world) Misiani sang about the Iraq war and criticised George Bush for ruining the lives of Iraqis. He said that: “I just sing about what is happening and if this offends some people, I can do little about it. What is wrong with singing about what’s going wrong in our society?"
Misiani died in a road accident near his home in Kisumu on 17 May 2006. He was mourned across East Africa, but particularly by Kenyans who insisted he ought to be buried in Kenya instead of where he was born in Tanzania. Highlighting Misiani’s political engagement, former Prime Minister and leader of CORD Raila Odinga eulogised Misiani, stating: “Misiani’s death is a big blow to Luo-land and all progressive voices of this country. Misiani spoke for the voiceless not only in Luo Nyanza, but entire Africa. I have lost an advisor, inspiration and supporter.”
Beatrice Owino, Misiani’s wife, still leads the band Shirati Jazz, and said the following after his death: ‘‘Misiani’s fans and the band still owe a lot of respect to him because of his un-matched talent and wisdom in his career as a musician. We do not have an option but to follow his footsteps as a band.”
While Misiani was clearly a popular musician in Kenya, he also was successful in bringing Benga to a global market, with spaces in Central, Eastern and Southern Africa all dancing to the same Benga beats at some point in the late twentieth century. His personal engagement with global and domestic politics became manifest in his music, highlighting that he was part of a politically aware class of musicians during the 1970s and 1980s.
While figures such as Misiani may be overlooked when thinking of ‘global lives’, it is clear that he was part of a fabric of a globally connected Africa. Within the region of East Africa, and the continent he was particularly visible (and remains so) but less so beyond these networks. Perhaps the reason that Southern African jazz and reggae musicians and West African blues musicians have enjoyed more attention globally is that their genres have been appreciated on a more international (trans-Atlantic) market than Benga, which has enjoyed particular interest mainly within Africa. Using music could offer an especially imaginative way to think about intra-African connections.
The father of Benga music, taking multilingual lyrics to a global audience
Daniel Owino Misiani was born 22nd February 1940 in a village called Nyamagong near Shirati in the Mara region of Tanzania, near the Kenyan border. Misiani enjoyed a childhood of playing and singing in Luo in school and church choirs, and as a teen he played percussion in a local acoustic group.
His parents, however, on religious grounds disapproved of him pursuing a musical career, and Misiani’s first guitar was destroyed by his deeply devout Christian father. Irrespective, Misiani pursued a career in music and travelled around Tanzania and Kenya. His music career had humble origins as a travelling guitarist, playing at funerals, social gatherings and bars in the Luo homeland of Kenya’s Nyanza province. In 1964 he settled in Nairobi.
In Nairobi, Misiani drew inspiration from Luo traditional music and began to pioneer the benga genre, replacing the traditional nyatiti with electric guitars, retaining the fast tempos he had enjoyed at home. Inspired by the success of Nairobi-based musicians such as Daudi Kabaka, Misiani made his first electric guitar recordings in 1965. Soon after, he formed a band to record under, named the Shirati Luo Voice (later to become Orchestra D.O.7, and in 1975: Shirati Jazz).
Shirati Jazz rose to the peak of its fame in the mid 1970s releasing an endless string of 45 rpm seven-inch singles such as Piny Lichina, Kiseru and Simon Agira, recording these various songs in Luo and Swahili. These were all produced under a variety of different labels, the most significant being Kanindo, Hundwe, Sunguru and Kung Fu.
D.O. Misiani came to criticise the former Presidents of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta, Daniel arap Moi and Mwai Kibaki during their leaderships of the country. Whereas the government sponsored choirs which composed music that helped celebrate the postcolonial state and maintain the status quo, musicians such as Misiani challenged these ideas. In his songs he called upon the presidents to answer controversial topics. During the early 1970s, in the song Kalamindi, Misiani criticised Kenyatta’s development policy which he perceived to perpetuate class and regional inequalities.
During the struggle for multiparty democracy in Kenya after the death of the then Foreign Minister Robert Ouko, Misiani was extradited by Moi’s government for ‘fuelling discontent’ in his music. After the December 2002 elections in Kenya, Misiani was arrested after releasing Bim men Bim (a baboon will remain a baboon). His song was perceived as an anti-government jibe which allegedly suggested that as Kibaki had been in Moi’s Government as Vice President he would not bring much change.
Misiani took an interest in political issues across the world, including coups, assassinations and ethnic conflicts. The subjects of his songs included events in Kenya, Congo, Egypt, South Africa, Somalia and Liberia. Misiani scorned leaders such as Idi Amin and had no problem in ridiculing leaders in Africa and across the world. In the song Wayuak ni Piny (We cry for the world) Misiani sang about the Iraq war and criticised George Bush for ruining the lives of Iraqis. He said that: “I just sing about what is happening and if this offends some people, I can do little about it. What is wrong with singing about what’s going wrong in our society?"
Misiani died in a road accident near his home in Kisumu on 17 May 2006. He was mourned across East Africa, but particularly by Kenyans who insisted he ought to be buried in Kenya instead of where he was born in Tanzania. Highlighting Misiani’s political engagement, former Prime Minister and leader of CORD Raila Odinga eulogised Misiani, stating: “Misiani’s death is a big blow to Luo-land and all progressive voices of this country. Misiani spoke for the voiceless not only in Luo Nyanza, but entire Africa. I have lost an advisor, inspiration and supporter.”
Beatrice Owino, Misiani’s wife, still leads the band Shirati Jazz, and said the following after his death: ‘‘Misiani’s fans and the band still owe a lot of respect to him because of his un-matched talent and wisdom in his career as a musician. We do not have an option but to follow his footsteps as a band.”
While Misiani was clearly a popular musician in Kenya, he also was successful in bringing Benga to a global market, with spaces in Central, Eastern and Southern Africa all dancing to the same Benga beats at some point in the late twentieth century. His personal engagement with global and domestic politics became manifest in his music, highlighting that he was part of a politically aware class of musicians during the 1970s and 1980s.
While figures such as Misiani may be overlooked when thinking of ‘global lives’, it is clear that he was part of a fabric of a globally connected Africa. Within the region of East Africa, and the continent he was particularly visible (and remains so) but less so beyond these networks. Perhaps the reason that Southern African jazz and reggae musicians and West African blues musicians have enjoyed more attention globally is that their genres have been appreciated on a more international (trans-Atlantic) market than Benga, which has enjoyed particular interest mainly within Africa. Using music could offer an especially imaginative way to think about intra-African connections.
Kilindini Road renamed Moi Avenue
To access Mombasa Island, one had to first get to the Mombasa Port. The Port was the docking point for traders and visitors and the precise location where invaders attempted to seize the city. The invasions informed the construction of Fort Jesus, close by the Port – in order to protect it.
The Fort served its purpose as a military garrison until the Baluchi soldiers (under the order of the Sultan of Oman) captured it from the Portuguese in 1698 and thus began the Omani rule in Mombasa.
Almost two centuries later, colonial powers were eager to plant their feet in African soil. In the first half of the 1890s, the East Africa area was partitioned between the British and the Germans. Mombasa Island and a great part of the area on the mainland were named British East Africa.
As a means to expand trade into the mainland all the way to Nam Lolwe (or Port Victoria as the British called it), in 1895 construction of East Africa’s first railway began. The project required a large shipment of materials and ships were scheduled to dock at the Port weekly with supplies. The only problem was that the Port wasn’t deep enough. To accommodate larger ships, a new jetty was required.
Area scouting along the Mombasa shores was done, and an ideal location was marked on the west side of the Island. The location, Kilindini, was a large inlet, and with no time to waste, in 1896 a Harbour was built.
When Mombasa roads were planned, the importance of the Kilindini Harbour was unquestioned. As such, a road was marked and built to run from the Harbour to the eastern part of the city.
By the late forties, Kilindini Road was one of Mombasa’s main streets.
Then, in February 1952, as part of the Royal tour of East Africa, Princess Elizabeth visited Mombasa on her way to Treetops Hotel in the Aberdare National Park. Her time in Mombasa, albeit short, was commemorated by the creation of two pairs of elephant tusks – made from aluminum, and welded so artistically that from a distance, they resembled actual tusks… only much larger.
The tusks were placed to form a dual archway over both sides of Kilindini Road. Residents and visitors were destined to see the unique work of art. Shortly after the Princess’s visit to Mombasa, word of King George VI’s passing was public knowledge, and it was in Kenya that the Princess became Queen.
Later that year, in October, the Mau Mau Uprising started.
Even after independence, Kilindini Road maintained its name. There was little reason for the first all-Kenyan government to change it, given its link to the Harbour. However, when Daniel arap Moi stepped into power in 1978, he made adjustments to the names of streets and even the face on Kenya’s currency.
To access Mombasa Island, one had to first get to the Mombasa Port. The Port was the docking point for traders and visitors and the precise location where invaders attempted to seize the city. The invasions informed the construction of Fort Jesus, close by the Port – in order to protect it.
The Fort served its purpose as a military garrison until the Baluchi soldiers (under the order of the Sultan of Oman) captured it from the Portuguese in 1698 and thus began the Omani rule in Mombasa.
Almost two centuries later, colonial powers were eager to plant their feet in African soil. In the first half of the 1890s, the East Africa area was partitioned between the British and the Germans. Mombasa Island and a great part of the area on the mainland were named British East Africa.
As a means to expand trade into the mainland all the way to Nam Lolwe (or Port Victoria as the British called it), in 1895 construction of East Africa’s first railway began. The project required a large shipment of materials and ships were scheduled to dock at the Port weekly with supplies. The only problem was that the Port wasn’t deep enough. To accommodate larger ships, a new jetty was required.
Area scouting along the Mombasa shores was done, and an ideal location was marked on the west side of the Island. The location, Kilindini, was a large inlet, and with no time to waste, in 1896 a Harbour was built.
When Mombasa roads were planned, the importance of the Kilindini Harbour was unquestioned. As such, a road was marked and built to run from the Harbour to the eastern part of the city.
By the late forties, Kilindini Road was one of Mombasa’s main streets.
Then, in February 1952, as part of the Royal tour of East Africa, Princess Elizabeth visited Mombasa on her way to Treetops Hotel in the Aberdare National Park. Her time in Mombasa, albeit short, was commemorated by the creation of two pairs of elephant tusks – made from aluminum, and welded so artistically that from a distance, they resembled actual tusks… only much larger.
The tusks were placed to form a dual archway over both sides of Kilindini Road. Residents and visitors were destined to see the unique work of art. Shortly after the Princess’s visit to Mombasa, word of King George VI’s passing was public knowledge, and it was in Kenya that the Princess became Queen.
Later that year, in October, the Mau Mau Uprising started.
Even after independence, Kilindini Road maintained its name. There was little reason for the first all-Kenyan government to change it, given its link to the Harbour. However, when Daniel arap Moi stepped into power in 1978, he made adjustments to the names of streets and even the face on Kenya’s currency.
Station Road renamed Haile Selassie Road and in resepect one of the main streets in Addis Ababa was named Jomo Kenyatta
In the 1890s the British government sought to lease fertile lands in the then East Africa Protectorate (present day Kenya and Uganda) to British settlers, particularly around the Lake Victoria basin where land was most fertile. And while the land was indeed high-yielding, it was hundreds of kilometres from the port of Mombasa.
To gather interest and further sell the idea of investing in land, not only around the lake, but in other areas within the hinterland, the British government planned to construct a railway line – East Africa’s first railway line.
In the final quarter of 1895, British engineer, Sir George Whitehouse, was contracted to lead the project. He sailed for Mombasa from Britain with two things: his expertise and a sketch of the route the railway line was supposed to take. On paper, the route seemed simple, presumably a few hundred kilometres. But in actuality, it would be approximately a thousand kilometres long. This meant that the construction work would be physically grueling, and the project cost would inevitably be high. Upon learning about the geography of the areas leading up to the lake, Whitehouse came to know a few facts.
The first was that there was a vast area of land a few kilometres outside of Mombasa that was avoided by most caravans due to its desert climate and presence of lions – Tsavo. There was an area of marshland that was within the planned route – Nairobi. Then there was a volcanic region that had plenty of hills and valleys – the Great Rift Valley. More so, over 100 kilometres of the area leading up to the Lake was very soggy.
Still, the work needed to be done.
In 1896 construction began in Mombasa. Whitehouse worked with a team of British experts, and 37,000 Indian labourers were brought in to build the actual line. The first railway station erected was in Mombasa and as the road in front of it became busier with time, it was named Station Road.
Almost seven decades later, a soon to be independent Kenya had Jomo Kenyatta as a strong candidate for presidency. This was the dawn of the sixties, and Jomo had built relationships with various Pan-African leaders, from Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, to Mwalimu Nyerere in Tanzania, and even Haile Selassie – the Emperor of Ethiopia.
Of all these friendships, little is mentioned about how Kenyatta and Selassie’s came to be buddies.
Though, in 1961, Kenyatta visited the Emperor in Ethiopia, and in 1964, Selassie flew in to Port Reitz airport in Mombasa where he was welcomed by President Jomo Kenyatta.
It was likely strategic or a sign of respect; but what later happened was the former Station Road acquired a new name when Kenyatta was sworn in as president. It was renamed Haile Selassie Road. And the same respect was returned when one of the main streets in Addis Ababa was named Jomo Kenyatta Avenue.
In the 1890s the British government sought to lease fertile lands in the then East Africa Protectorate (present day Kenya and Uganda) to British settlers, particularly around the Lake Victoria basin where land was most fertile. And while the land was indeed high-yielding, it was hundreds of kilometres from the port of Mombasa.
To gather interest and further sell the idea of investing in land, not only around the lake, but in other areas within the hinterland, the British government planned to construct a railway line – East Africa’s first railway line.
In the final quarter of 1895, British engineer, Sir George Whitehouse, was contracted to lead the project. He sailed for Mombasa from Britain with two things: his expertise and a sketch of the route the railway line was supposed to take. On paper, the route seemed simple, presumably a few hundred kilometres. But in actuality, it would be approximately a thousand kilometres long. This meant that the construction work would be physically grueling, and the project cost would inevitably be high. Upon learning about the geography of the areas leading up to the lake, Whitehouse came to know a few facts.
The first was that there was a vast area of land a few kilometres outside of Mombasa that was avoided by most caravans due to its desert climate and presence of lions – Tsavo. There was an area of marshland that was within the planned route – Nairobi. Then there was a volcanic region that had plenty of hills and valleys – the Great Rift Valley. More so, over 100 kilometres of the area leading up to the Lake was very soggy.
Still, the work needed to be done.
In 1896 construction began in Mombasa. Whitehouse worked with a team of British experts, and 37,000 Indian labourers were brought in to build the actual line. The first railway station erected was in Mombasa and as the road in front of it became busier with time, it was named Station Road.
Almost seven decades later, a soon to be independent Kenya had Jomo Kenyatta as a strong candidate for presidency. This was the dawn of the sixties, and Jomo had built relationships with various Pan-African leaders, from Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, to Mwalimu Nyerere in Tanzania, and even Haile Selassie – the Emperor of Ethiopia.
Of all these friendships, little is mentioned about how Kenyatta and Selassie’s came to be buddies.
Though, in 1961, Kenyatta visited the Emperor in Ethiopia, and in 1964, Selassie flew in to Port Reitz airport in Mombasa where he was welcomed by President Jomo Kenyatta.
It was likely strategic or a sign of respect; but what later happened was the former Station Road acquired a new name when Kenyatta was sworn in as president. It was renamed Haile Selassie Road. And the same respect was returned when one of the main streets in Addis Ababa was named Jomo Kenyatta Avenue.
Prince Charles Street in Mombasa was later renamed Nyerere Avenue
An acute shortage of goods and services accompanied the war, and labour was one of the shortages the colonies suffered. This affected the progression of industries driven by African toil such as private plantation farming and public infrastructure maintenance. On the flip side, work done by Europeans was not stalled, and some developments even spurred in certain sectors. One such outcome was the establishment of Likoni Ferry in 1914. The ferry, which consisted of a pontoon boat drawn using a motorboat, was created to transport British troops to the mainland south of Mombasa.
Colonial authorities had no hesitation about using Africans captured during the war to fill existing labour gaps, and in 1917 the British military authorities transported 800 prisoners of war from German East Africa to the north of British East Africa to build roads. After crossing the border, these prisoners were transported to the internment camp in Nairobi before being relocated to Mombasa to begin the construction of Salim Road the next year. Salim Road stretched from the Freretown Ferry to the new Likoni Ferry.
Thanks to the roads built during the war, even after it ended, Mombasa’s growth continued due to the island’s accessibility. A motorized ferry was introduced at Likoni in 1926. In 1937, Kenya Bus Services took over the management of this crossing. This transport franchise was an arrangement with the Municipal Council of Mombasa since the bus company was successfully operating a bus network in Mombasa and Nairobi.
*
On 14th November 1948, Charles – the eldest son of Princess Elizabeth and Philip – was born at Buckingham Palace. He was crowned the Duke of Edinburgh. Three years later, his mother was proclaimed Queen Elizabeth II following the death of King George VI. On The Queen’s accession to the throne, Prince Charles became heir apparent. To commemorate this event, a part of Salim Road running from the intersection with Kilindini Road down to Likoni Ferry was renamed by the British colonial government to Prince Charles Street.
The growth of Prince Charles Street went hand in hand with the development of Likoni Ferry. In 1957, a new era was ushered in as more modern ferries were introduced to the crossing.
*
One of the changes that followed independence was the decolonization of street names, and the names of African leaders were the first to be considered during this process. Prince Charles Street was renamed to Nyerere Avenue after Tanzania’s newly elected president.
Julius Kambarage Nyerere was born in Tanganyika in 1922. He was educated at Tabora Secondary School and Makerere College in Uganda before going to Edinburgh University. He graduated with a master’s degree in history and economics in 1952 before returning to Tanganyika to teach.
Nyerere entered the political arena in 1953 and was one of the key figures who steered Tanganyika to gaining its self-governance in September 1960. On 9th December 1961, Tanganyika became independent with Nyerere as its first prime minister. The next month, however, he resigned from this position to devote his time to writing and synthesizing his views of government and of African unity. When Tanganyika became a republic in 1962, he was elected president, and in 1964 he became president of the United Republic of Tanzania (Tanganyika and Zanzibar).
Naming this street after a Tanzanian leader was not only a commemoration of his accomplishments, but it was also a tribute to the prisoners of war who hailed from this nation whose labour was exploited to build this street.
An acute shortage of goods and services accompanied the war, and labour was one of the shortages the colonies suffered. This affected the progression of industries driven by African toil such as private plantation farming and public infrastructure maintenance. On the flip side, work done by Europeans was not stalled, and some developments even spurred in certain sectors. One such outcome was the establishment of Likoni Ferry in 1914. The ferry, which consisted of a pontoon boat drawn using a motorboat, was created to transport British troops to the mainland south of Mombasa.
Colonial authorities had no hesitation about using Africans captured during the war to fill existing labour gaps, and in 1917 the British military authorities transported 800 prisoners of war from German East Africa to the north of British East Africa to build roads. After crossing the border, these prisoners were transported to the internment camp in Nairobi before being relocated to Mombasa to begin the construction of Salim Road the next year. Salim Road stretched from the Freretown Ferry to the new Likoni Ferry.
Thanks to the roads built during the war, even after it ended, Mombasa’s growth continued due to the island’s accessibility. A motorized ferry was introduced at Likoni in 1926. In 1937, Kenya Bus Services took over the management of this crossing. This transport franchise was an arrangement with the Municipal Council of Mombasa since the bus company was successfully operating a bus network in Mombasa and Nairobi.
*
On 14th November 1948, Charles – the eldest son of Princess Elizabeth and Philip – was born at Buckingham Palace. He was crowned the Duke of Edinburgh. Three years later, his mother was proclaimed Queen Elizabeth II following the death of King George VI. On The Queen’s accession to the throne, Prince Charles became heir apparent. To commemorate this event, a part of Salim Road running from the intersection with Kilindini Road down to Likoni Ferry was renamed by the British colonial government to Prince Charles Street.
The growth of Prince Charles Street went hand in hand with the development of Likoni Ferry. In 1957, a new era was ushered in as more modern ferries were introduced to the crossing.
*
One of the changes that followed independence was the decolonization of street names, and the names of African leaders were the first to be considered during this process. Prince Charles Street was renamed to Nyerere Avenue after Tanzania’s newly elected president.
Julius Kambarage Nyerere was born in Tanganyika in 1922. He was educated at Tabora Secondary School and Makerere College in Uganda before going to Edinburgh University. He graduated with a master’s degree in history and economics in 1952 before returning to Tanganyika to teach.
Nyerere entered the political arena in 1953 and was one of the key figures who steered Tanganyika to gaining its self-governance in September 1960. On 9th December 1961, Tanganyika became independent with Nyerere as its first prime minister. The next month, however, he resigned from this position to devote his time to writing and synthesizing his views of government and of African unity. When Tanganyika became a republic in 1962, he was elected president, and in 1964 he became president of the United Republic of Tanzania (Tanganyika and Zanzibar).
Naming this street after a Tanzanian leader was not only a commemoration of his accomplishments, but it was also a tribute to the prisoners of war who hailed from this nation whose labour was exploited to build this street.
Nyali Bridge
Mombasa Island’s strategic location amplified its importance from as far back as the 13th century. By the 20th century, British officials and settlers had familiarized themselves with the Island and wanted to spread inwards. To get from the island to the mainland, boats were initially used, but were soon considered a slow and risky means. As the East Africa railway project commenced, a modern bridge (Salisbury Bridge) was constructed on the northern side of the Island for the transportation of railway materials and for public crossing.
By the 1920s, there were talks of constructing a major bridge on the eastern side to link Mombasa Island to Nyali on the mainland. This was around the time that the Salisbury Bridge on the northern side of the Island was being replaced by a causeway.
In 1931, colonial Governor, Sir Jospeh Byrne’s administration commissioned Japanese engineers to construct a pontoon bridge. Some sources however point to the Guinness family from Ireland, saying that the bridge was a donation from them.
The floating bridge was fixed to the floor of the ocean through large anchors, similar to those used in warships of those times, and was built using steel. Upon completion, Mombasa-east and the areas east of Tudor Creek such as Bamburi and Kisauni were easily accessible thanks to the bridge. This development also brought forth the rise of private companies and hotels on the eastern side of Mombasa Island and in Nyali.
The bridge took hold even after independence. Then towards the end of the 1970s, construction of a new, modern bridge commenced. The former pontoon bridge was dismantled and replaced by a beam bridge.
The new Nyali Bridge was completed in 1981. It is approximately 390 metres long and 26 metres wide, and is divided into six lanes. The bridge underwent maintenance in 2005.
Mombasa Island’s strategic location amplified its importance from as far back as the 13th century. By the 20th century, British officials and settlers had familiarized themselves with the Island and wanted to spread inwards. To get from the island to the mainland, boats were initially used, but were soon considered a slow and risky means. As the East Africa railway project commenced, a modern bridge (Salisbury Bridge) was constructed on the northern side of the Island for the transportation of railway materials and for public crossing.
By the 1920s, there were talks of constructing a major bridge on the eastern side to link Mombasa Island to Nyali on the mainland. This was around the time that the Salisbury Bridge on the northern side of the Island was being replaced by a causeway.
In 1931, colonial Governor, Sir Jospeh Byrne’s administration commissioned Japanese engineers to construct a pontoon bridge. Some sources however point to the Guinness family from Ireland, saying that the bridge was a donation from them.
The floating bridge was fixed to the floor of the ocean through large anchors, similar to those used in warships of those times, and was built using steel. Upon completion, Mombasa-east and the areas east of Tudor Creek such as Bamburi and Kisauni were easily accessible thanks to the bridge. This development also brought forth the rise of private companies and hotels on the eastern side of Mombasa Island and in Nyali.
The bridge took hold even after independence. Then towards the end of the 1970s, construction of a new, modern bridge commenced. The former pontoon bridge was dismantled and replaced by a beam bridge.
The new Nyali Bridge was completed in 1981. It is approximately 390 metres long and 26 metres wide, and is divided into six lanes. The bridge underwent maintenance in 2005.
The last train to cross Delamere Avenue, now Kenyatta Avenue, before the realignment to Kikuyu was opened in 1950.
@QuadroK4000 leta maswali
@QuadroK4000 leta maswali
How a couple unknowingly bought Moi’s Land Rover and got more than they bargained for.
Naomi Lukio was tending to her farm one early morning in 1984 at the sleepy Losogwa village near Nyahururu town, when a Government vehicle pulled into her compound.
Government officials present asked her to accompany them to the local District Commissioner’s (DC’s) office and Naomi quickly spruced herself up for the short trip to Nyahururu town.
Accompanied by her son Moses, she was informed upon arrival at the DC’s office that they would be going to Kabarak to meet President Daniel Arap Moi.
It was a decisive moment in her attempt to have an old Land Rover, purchased by her husband Ismael Kaaya Lukio, transferred to the family.
For more than three years the family had made efforts to reach the President as the documents for Land Rover KGT 200 was still in the country’s top man’s name.
Frustrated at being taken in circles by the provincial administration, Naomi was almost giving up on the transfer issue when the pleasant surprise came.
She does not know how the information reached the former President, who then directed that she be taken to Kabarak to meet him over the issue.
“As we pulled into Kabarak I was in shock and awe and upon arrival we were ushered to meet the former President who was in a jovial mood and we had a hearty chat,” she says.
Moi asked her: “Funguo nitapatia nani?” (who will I hand over the keys to?). She was amazed. But when she regained her composure she mentioned her son who was immediately called into the room.
It was at this point the President handed over keys to a brand new Datsun 1200 KUP 957 to her son in exchange for the rickety Land Rover.
“The vehicle was sparkling and had been fueled to full tank with comprehensive insurance policy, and I was very excited,” she added.
The antique Land Rover is still among a collection of old vehicles still donning the former President’s garage in Kabarak.
For the Lukio family, it remains their link with the man who became the country’s longest serving President.
Tired of the rough terrain and poor roads in his area, Naomi’s husband Lukio had approached his employer, an Asian businessman to assist him acquire a Land Rover.
“It was the only vehicle that could withstand the usually wet conditions which prevail in this area, and acquiring it was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream,”the 86 year-old man recalls.
Lukio’s boss, a Mr Dachu, was based in Ol Kalou and was both a petroleum and a motor vehicle dealer. According to him, the Asian businessman had bought the vehicle from one of campaigners of Moi in the 1970s when he was still Vice President.
“The cost of maintaining the vehicle was high and the campaigner decided to get rid of it and sold it to my boss,” he recalled.
The Land Rover was going for Sh7,000 (a lot of money at the time) but Lukio got it for half the price in 1971 owing to his cordial relationship with his employer.
Owning a vehicle then, leave alone the highly valued British-made Land Rover, was not a mean achievement, and Lukio was elated.
But upon returning home with his prized possession, Lukio realised the vehicle’s logbook was in the former President’s name.
He was surprised but after talking to his employer and government officers he was informed he could continue using the vehicle as he made efforts to change the documents.
But after using it for a few years he was informed he could no longer continue using the old logbook, as there was no more space left for stamping.
“The officers told me not to go to their office with that old logbook again and I knew that I was in trouble as the vehicle would be grounded,” he added.
It would mark the beginning of a torturous cat and mouse game between the family and senior government officials and politicians as they sought to meet the former President for the transfer.
Naomi, who knew several prominent people in Nyandarua and Laikipia from her days in the freedom struggle, decided to seek their assistance in meeting Moi.
Naomi Lukio was tending to her farm one early morning in 1984 at the sleepy Losogwa village near Nyahururu town, when a Government vehicle pulled into her compound.
Government officials present asked her to accompany them to the local District Commissioner’s (DC’s) office and Naomi quickly spruced herself up for the short trip to Nyahururu town.
Accompanied by her son Moses, she was informed upon arrival at the DC’s office that they would be going to Kabarak to meet President Daniel Arap Moi.
It was a decisive moment in her attempt to have an old Land Rover, purchased by her husband Ismael Kaaya Lukio, transferred to the family.
For more than three years the family had made efforts to reach the President as the documents for Land Rover KGT 200 was still in the country’s top man’s name.
Frustrated at being taken in circles by the provincial administration, Naomi was almost giving up on the transfer issue when the pleasant surprise came.
She does not know how the information reached the former President, who then directed that she be taken to Kabarak to meet him over the issue.
“As we pulled into Kabarak I was in shock and awe and upon arrival we were ushered to meet the former President who was in a jovial mood and we had a hearty chat,” she says.
Moi asked her: “Funguo nitapatia nani?” (who will I hand over the keys to?). She was amazed. But when she regained her composure she mentioned her son who was immediately called into the room.
It was at this point the President handed over keys to a brand new Datsun 1200 KUP 957 to her son in exchange for the rickety Land Rover.
“The vehicle was sparkling and had been fueled to full tank with comprehensive insurance policy, and I was very excited,” she added.
The antique Land Rover is still among a collection of old vehicles still donning the former President’s garage in Kabarak.
For the Lukio family, it remains their link with the man who became the country’s longest serving President.
Tired of the rough terrain and poor roads in his area, Naomi’s husband Lukio had approached his employer, an Asian businessman to assist him acquire a Land Rover.
“It was the only vehicle that could withstand the usually wet conditions which prevail in this area, and acquiring it was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream,”the 86 year-old man recalls.
Lukio’s boss, a Mr Dachu, was based in Ol Kalou and was both a petroleum and a motor vehicle dealer. According to him, the Asian businessman had bought the vehicle from one of campaigners of Moi in the 1970s when he was still Vice President.
“The cost of maintaining the vehicle was high and the campaigner decided to get rid of it and sold it to my boss,” he recalled.
The Land Rover was going for Sh7,000 (a lot of money at the time) but Lukio got it for half the price in 1971 owing to his cordial relationship with his employer.
Owning a vehicle then, leave alone the highly valued British-made Land Rover, was not a mean achievement, and Lukio was elated.
But upon returning home with his prized possession, Lukio realised the vehicle’s logbook was in the former President’s name.
He was surprised but after talking to his employer and government officers he was informed he could continue using the vehicle as he made efforts to change the documents.
But after using it for a few years he was informed he could no longer continue using the old logbook, as there was no more space left for stamping.
“The officers told me not to go to their office with that old logbook again and I knew that I was in trouble as the vehicle would be grounded,” he added.
It would mark the beginning of a torturous cat and mouse game between the family and senior government officials and politicians as they sought to meet the former President for the transfer.
Naomi, who knew several prominent people in Nyandarua and Laikipia from her days in the freedom struggle, decided to seek their assistance in meeting Moi.
Captured below is Kisoi Munyao, who planted the flag on Mt. Kenya on 12/12/1963. This image is as old as Kenya's independence, and while Munyao is a celebrated national hero, little is said about Njuguna Gitau, the Kenyan Photographer who captured this moment.
Njuguna Gitau: The Photographer
Pencil and paper were Njuguna Gitau’s closest allies when he was growing up in the 1940s. Whatever made up his immediate surrounding, Njuguna tasked himself with drawing it. His first sketches while studying at Kiahiti Independent School consisted of cows, desks, chairs and trees, but as he grew older, he began to take on more challenging subjects including the people around him.
As the struggle for independence intensified, many bystanders got caught up in the war between the colonial government and freedom fighters. Njuguna was in class seven when Kiahiti Independent School – newly upgraded to Karura High School – was shut down and completely torn down for allegedly harbouring Mau Mau militants. With school no longer in session, this budding sketch artist decided to leave his hometown of Murang’a for Nairobi, hoping to find his way in the land of opportunity.
Upon his arrival, Njuguna befriended newspaper vendors, who sold his artwork as they sold the days’ papers. His sketches became extremely popular and within no time, the BBC caught wind of his talents and contacted him for a job opportunity. Remembering the aftermath of the war on his village and the role of the British in this destruction, Njuguna turned down the offer to work for a British-owned corporation. But his vendor friends had seen his potential and were not about to let him squander the opportunity. They insisted that he listen to the proposition and even arranged for a sit-down without his knowledge. This was how a few weeks later, Njuguna Gitau found himself aboard a plane to Britain to train in fine art, still photography and cinematography while working for the broadcasting corporation.
He returned to Kenya in 1958 a well-trained seasoned photographer who travelled to different countries to cover international events. Njuguna’s calling had evolved from capturing the world as he saw it in his mind’s eye to capturing it as it appeared in front of his view finder. His time behind the lens had made him gain a deep appreciation for this art and he was proud to capture profound historical moments including the release trials of the Kapenguria Six, as well as another event that was of great significance for the entire nation.
A few days before Kenya was set to celebrate her independence, Njuguna was tasked with documenting the flag-planting on Mount Kenya. Together with mountaineer Kisoi Munyao, he set off from Nairobi to the mountain base at Naro Moru where the climb began. Trekking in such high altitudes was daunting enough but having to carry heavy camera equipment on the upward scale was even more exacting. The hike was slow and the environment harsh, but the two persevered to Point Lenana. Here Njuguna positioned himself behind the camera and snapped a photo of Kisoi setting the Kenyan flag firmly in place as it waved furiously in the cold winds as though ushering in a breath of fresh air to the country. This image, taken on 12th December 1963, is synonymous with our independence, and this date lives on in the Kenyan calendar as Jamhuri Day.
Njuguna remained with the BBC until August 1964 when he joined the Voice of Kenya. Here his videography career continued to blossom. In 1966, when the Presidential Press Unit was established, Njuguna’s outstanding work earned him a spot as the first member of this detail. He spent the rest of his career doing what he loved, until 1988 when he retired from office. For his years of service, Njuguna Gitau was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award during the third edition of the Kenya International Film Festival in 2008.
Njuguna Gitau: The Photographer
Pencil and paper were Njuguna Gitau’s closest allies when he was growing up in the 1940s. Whatever made up his immediate surrounding, Njuguna tasked himself with drawing it. His first sketches while studying at Kiahiti Independent School consisted of cows, desks, chairs and trees, but as he grew older, he began to take on more challenging subjects including the people around him.
As the struggle for independence intensified, many bystanders got caught up in the war between the colonial government and freedom fighters. Njuguna was in class seven when Kiahiti Independent School – newly upgraded to Karura High School – was shut down and completely torn down for allegedly harbouring Mau Mau militants. With school no longer in session, this budding sketch artist decided to leave his hometown of Murang’a for Nairobi, hoping to find his way in the land of opportunity.
Upon his arrival, Njuguna befriended newspaper vendors, who sold his artwork as they sold the days’ papers. His sketches became extremely popular and within no time, the BBC caught wind of his talents and contacted him for a job opportunity. Remembering the aftermath of the war on his village and the role of the British in this destruction, Njuguna turned down the offer to work for a British-owned corporation. But his vendor friends had seen his potential and were not about to let him squander the opportunity. They insisted that he listen to the proposition and even arranged for a sit-down without his knowledge. This was how a few weeks later, Njuguna Gitau found himself aboard a plane to Britain to train in fine art, still photography and cinematography while working for the broadcasting corporation.
He returned to Kenya in 1958 a well-trained seasoned photographer who travelled to different countries to cover international events. Njuguna’s calling had evolved from capturing the world as he saw it in his mind’s eye to capturing it as it appeared in front of his view finder. His time behind the lens had made him gain a deep appreciation for this art and he was proud to capture profound historical moments including the release trials of the Kapenguria Six, as well as another event that was of great significance for the entire nation.
A few days before Kenya was set to celebrate her independence, Njuguna was tasked with documenting the flag-planting on Mount Kenya. Together with mountaineer Kisoi Munyao, he set off from Nairobi to the mountain base at Naro Moru where the climb began. Trekking in such high altitudes was daunting enough but having to carry heavy camera equipment on the upward scale was even more exacting. The hike was slow and the environment harsh, but the two persevered to Point Lenana. Here Njuguna positioned himself behind the camera and snapped a photo of Kisoi setting the Kenyan flag firmly in place as it waved furiously in the cold winds as though ushering in a breath of fresh air to the country. This image, taken on 12th December 1963, is synonymous with our independence, and this date lives on in the Kenyan calendar as Jamhuri Day.
Njuguna remained with the BBC until August 1964 when he joined the Voice of Kenya. Here his videography career continued to blossom. In 1966, when the Presidential Press Unit was established, Njuguna’s outstanding work earned him a spot as the first member of this detail. He spent the rest of his career doing what he loved, until 1988 when he retired from office. For his years of service, Njuguna Gitau was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award during the third edition of the Kenya International Film Festival in 2008.
Priya Ramrakha: Kenya’s First International Photojournalist
They say a picture is worth a thousand words and through the lenses of photographers such as Priya Ramrakha, we truly come to understand the weight of this simple phrase. Born in January 1935 in Kenya, Priya grew up in a turbulent time in Kenya’s history. Non-Europeans were constantly agitating for more recognition and rights from the colonial government while at the same time Britain was drawing on her colonial subjects to fight in her wars. The irony of this oddity was not lost on Priya as he began exploring his place in the world. From a young age his heart was fixed on photography that as a teenager he managed to convince his father to purchase his first camera – a top of the range camera in the forties – a Rolleiflex. So convincing was he, that his father went out on a limb for the budding photographer and purchased the camera on instalments. It was an investment that bore fruit for life. The camera became an extension of him and Priya was never found without it.
By the time he was in his late teens he got his first job as a staff photographer for the Colonial Times, one of the colony’s few newspapers, and shortly thereafter was contracted to its sister paper Jicho, the colony’s first Swahili newspaper. The first examples of Priya’s photography-based activism were seen at this time, where he would go to one event and capture completely different photos – for the English paper, the “expected” non-controversial photos, and for Jicho, clear examples of how Africans and Indians were treated as second class citizens even at official events.
In time he became known as photographer of excellence and was one of the few Kenyans photographers allowed into the notorious detention camps during the Emergency. From his careful curation we have in our history clear pictures of the horror that Africans went through as prisoners in their own country. Priya brought to life a different Africa – one that wasn’t defined by western ideas or biases but one that was true and authentic from the perspective of one of its own. Protests led by Tom Mboya in his signature kofia showing orderly protests by African nationalists, fashionable young women in the capital denouncing the colonial government, the Legco as a formidable force – all these are examples of the Kenya that he captured with his lens. In the 50s this was ground-breaking and distinct; not in tune with the images of terrorist Mau Mau that dominated the stories covered by Westerners.
Shedding a light on injustices clearly made an impression on the young photographer and his talent was spotted by a Time/Life Photographer in 1959 who took him on as an Assistant and shortly thereafter sponsored him to pursue a photography course at the Art Centre College in Los Angeles, California. The next few years were heady ones for the young Kenyan. He had just the right eye and the right mindset to navigate America during the Civil Rights era. His iconic up-close photos of Martin Luther King, JFK, Malcolm X and Miriam Makeba bear testament to not just his skill, but his ability to find a story. If there was someone seeking justice Priya was there to capture the story on celluloid. After all, he had cut his teeth in one of the most unjust places on the planet.
With his certificate under his arm and a new array of cameras, Priya headed back to Kenya in the early 60s, eager to capture the wave of independence sweeping across the continent. The protestors and detainees of yesteryear were the new Presidents and Prime Ministers and he was there to photograph the transitions. From the jubilation of the Independence Day celebrations in Nairobi, Lilongwe and Dar es Salaam, to the fits and starts of the post-independence decade marred by coups in Zanzibar, the Congo and beyond, Priya and his camera were always at the ready.
With his keen eye, local knowledge and ready-to-go attitude, Priya was hired by the one of the biggest news magazines in the world at the time – Time/Life, making him our first international photojournalist. From this vantage point he brought to the world a different Africa – beyond the tired and tried single story of the African warrior. To Time/Life readers he brought poets, musicians and dancers from Dakar, he showcased Raymonds fashion shoots from East Africa and shared photos of everyday folks doing their jobs with dignity and living with aplomb, whether it was aircraft mechanics, barbers, rally drivers or high society ladies at the races. Priya’s lens expanded the notion of “dark Africa” in way that constantly surprised people who had boxed the continent into one lens.
Dedicated to uncovering stories of injustice, his was a calling that would eventually exact a heavy toll. In 1968 the most volatile news story coming out of Africa was the Biafran war. Started in 1967 as a secessionist movement, the civil war had resulted in a humanitarian crisis by the following year as the region was blockaded by the Nigerian government and famine followed. Against the counsel of friends and colleagues Priya was determined to go and cover the war. It was a decision that would prove fatal as he was caught in the crossfire between Biafran and government troops on 2nd October. Up until his last moments 33-year-old Priya was still capturing photos, still focused on capturing our African story from his authentic and unassuming viewpoint. While we lost the visionary decades ago, we have his legacy. Thousands of photos of Kenya, Africa, the world, over a twenty-year span at some of its most important turning points, all captured from the heart by a son of the soil.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words and through the lenses of photographers such as Priya Ramrakha, we truly come to understand the weight of this simple phrase. Born in January 1935 in Kenya, Priya grew up in a turbulent time in Kenya’s history. Non-Europeans were constantly agitating for more recognition and rights from the colonial government while at the same time Britain was drawing on her colonial subjects to fight in her wars. The irony of this oddity was not lost on Priya as he began exploring his place in the world. From a young age his heart was fixed on photography that as a teenager he managed to convince his father to purchase his first camera – a top of the range camera in the forties – a Rolleiflex. So convincing was he, that his father went out on a limb for the budding photographer and purchased the camera on instalments. It was an investment that bore fruit for life. The camera became an extension of him and Priya was never found without it.
By the time he was in his late teens he got his first job as a staff photographer for the Colonial Times, one of the colony’s few newspapers, and shortly thereafter was contracted to its sister paper Jicho, the colony’s first Swahili newspaper. The first examples of Priya’s photography-based activism were seen at this time, where he would go to one event and capture completely different photos – for the English paper, the “expected” non-controversial photos, and for Jicho, clear examples of how Africans and Indians were treated as second class citizens even at official events.
In time he became known as photographer of excellence and was one of the few Kenyans photographers allowed into the notorious detention camps during the Emergency. From his careful curation we have in our history clear pictures of the horror that Africans went through as prisoners in their own country. Priya brought to life a different Africa – one that wasn’t defined by western ideas or biases but one that was true and authentic from the perspective of one of its own. Protests led by Tom Mboya in his signature kofia showing orderly protests by African nationalists, fashionable young women in the capital denouncing the colonial government, the Legco as a formidable force – all these are examples of the Kenya that he captured with his lens. In the 50s this was ground-breaking and distinct; not in tune with the images of terrorist Mau Mau that dominated the stories covered by Westerners.
Shedding a light on injustices clearly made an impression on the young photographer and his talent was spotted by a Time/Life Photographer in 1959 who took him on as an Assistant and shortly thereafter sponsored him to pursue a photography course at the Art Centre College in Los Angeles, California. The next few years were heady ones for the young Kenyan. He had just the right eye and the right mindset to navigate America during the Civil Rights era. His iconic up-close photos of Martin Luther King, JFK, Malcolm X and Miriam Makeba bear testament to not just his skill, but his ability to find a story. If there was someone seeking justice Priya was there to capture the story on celluloid. After all, he had cut his teeth in one of the most unjust places on the planet.
With his certificate under his arm and a new array of cameras, Priya headed back to Kenya in the early 60s, eager to capture the wave of independence sweeping across the continent. The protestors and detainees of yesteryear were the new Presidents and Prime Ministers and he was there to photograph the transitions. From the jubilation of the Independence Day celebrations in Nairobi, Lilongwe and Dar es Salaam, to the fits and starts of the post-independence decade marred by coups in Zanzibar, the Congo and beyond, Priya and his camera were always at the ready.
With his keen eye, local knowledge and ready-to-go attitude, Priya was hired by the one of the biggest news magazines in the world at the time – Time/Life, making him our first international photojournalist. From this vantage point he brought to the world a different Africa – beyond the tired and tried single story of the African warrior. To Time/Life readers he brought poets, musicians and dancers from Dakar, he showcased Raymonds fashion shoots from East Africa and shared photos of everyday folks doing their jobs with dignity and living with aplomb, whether it was aircraft mechanics, barbers, rally drivers or high society ladies at the races. Priya’s lens expanded the notion of “dark Africa” in way that constantly surprised people who had boxed the continent into one lens.
Dedicated to uncovering stories of injustice, his was a calling that would eventually exact a heavy toll. In 1968 the most volatile news story coming out of Africa was the Biafran war. Started in 1967 as a secessionist movement, the civil war had resulted in a humanitarian crisis by the following year as the region was blockaded by the Nigerian government and famine followed. Against the counsel of friends and colleagues Priya was determined to go and cover the war. It was a decision that would prove fatal as he was caught in the crossfire between Biafran and government troops on 2nd October. Up until his last moments 33-year-old Priya was still capturing photos, still focused on capturing our African story from his authentic and unassuming viewpoint. While we lost the visionary decades ago, we have his legacy. Thousands of photos of Kenya, Africa, the world, over a twenty-year span at some of its most important turning points, all captured from the heart by a son of the soil.
The Original Karen Surbubs | Colonial Nostalgia
“A.K.A Upper Kibra
After Kenya declared independence from British rule in 1963, there came a flood of renamings. Schools, suburbs, and roads were rechristened in ways that spoke to a new idea of what it meant to be authentically Kenyan. In Nairobi, “Queens Way” became “Mama Ngina Street,” and roads named after the first four colonial commissioners were redesignated for African leaders: Dedan Kimathi, Muindi Mbingu, Daudi Dabasso Wabera, and Mbiyu Koinange, respectively.
One appellation that escaped the fate of the rest was “Karen” — the name of a Nairobi suburb, presumably christened for the Baroness Karen Blixen, the Danish writer also known as Isak Dinesen. Karen Estate lies seventeen kilometers west of the city centre and is one of a few Nairobi suburbs where tall jacarandas loom large, straddling long driveways onto huge mansions with plush gardens. It hosts diplomats, powerful business people, the upper strata of Kenya’s political class, expatriates, and much of Kenya’s privileged white, Asian, and Black populations.
Karen’s contemporary ethos was unintentionally revealed in a New York Times Style story about the suburb’s upscale boutiques in which every single shop-owner and fashion designer mentioned is a white woman, including the Swedish proprietor of a shop called “Bush Princess.” Karen, we learn, is “home to some of the city’s most intriguing and exclusive places to shop.” The two African women pictured, only one of them named, are both floor staff. The colonial undertones are even less veiled in a 1985 story in The Washington Post that devoted copious print inches to explaining the pains white homeowners in the “horsey suburb” took to protect their houses and “well-trimmed hedges” from Kenyan robbers. In Karen today, you can breakfast with the endangered Rothschild giraffes at Giraffe Manor, or adopt an elephant at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. And, of course, you can visit the Karen Blixen Museum, in the house where the baroness once lived.
Karen Blixen, a Danish aristocrat, moved to Kenya at the height of Empire, in 1913, with her new husband, 15,000 Danish crowns, and the intention to start a coffee farm. It was only later, after she returned to Denmark in 1931, that she gradually found fame as a writer. Her 1937 memoir, Out of Africa, offers a record of her time in Kenya, detailing her relationships with her lovers, her servants, and the two thousand “Natives” who lived on her farm. As Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, the grand old man of Kenyan letters, later wrote, “As if in compensation for unfulfilled desires and longings, the baroness turned Kenya into a vast erotic dreamland in which her several white lovers appeared as young gods and her Kenyan servants as usable curs and other animals.”
And dreamland she made it. On safari, Blixen’s servants carried bathwater to her on their heads across the plain, and, she writes, “when we outspanned at noon, they constructed a canopy against the sun, made out of spears and blankets, for me to rest under.” She imagines herself a judge to the Kikuyu squatters, claiming at one point that she looks at her cook “with something of a creator’s eyes.” To Blixen, the Africans existed if not quite at the level of the bush animals, then somewhere just above them. “The Natives,” she writes, “could withdraw into a world of their own, in a second, like the wild animals which at an abrupt movement from you are gone—simply are not there.” She believed that “the umbilical cord of Nature has, with them, not been quite cut through.”
Deserted by her husband, Karen threw herself into the hedonistic social life available to the European gentry in the colony. When the Duke and Prince of Wales came to visit, she made the local Kikuyu perform a dance in their honor. She and her lover, British big game hunter Denys Finch-Hatton, oscillated in and out of the “Happy Valley set,” described by Ulf Aschan, the godson of Blixen’s husband, as “relentless in their pursuit to be amused, more often attaining this through drink, drugs, and sex.” A popular question among British aristocrats at the time was, “Are you married or do you live in Kenya?” None of this appears in Blixen’s memoir, which skips over wild parties in favor of providing lush detail about the landscape and the “Natives.”
In The New York Review of Books, American critic Jane Kramer called Out of Africa “without a doubt the most irresistible prose ever written about East Africa.” A bestseller, it was selected for the Book-of-the-Month Club, included in the Modern Library series “100 Best Nonfiction Books,” and translated into multiple languages. Blixen’s name was regularly floated as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. When Ernest Hemingway — a regular hunting partner of Blixen’s husband, Bror — won the prize in 1954, he suggested it should have gone to her instead. (She was reportedly closest in 1961, when she was passed over for Ivo Andrić.)
In 1985, the memoir was adapted into a film directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. The plot, which draws on several additional sources including Blixen’s second memoir, Shadows on the Grass, and Judith Thurman’s biography of Blixen, is primarily focused on Blixen’s romance with Finch-Hatton. It brought in $227.5 million at the box office and swept the Oscars, winning seven awards including Best Picture and Best Director, and propelling the image of Kenya as a romantic gateway into popular imagination.
The year after the film’s release, Kenya saw a dramatic spike in tourism (from 152,000 visitors to 176,000 in a single year), and the house Blixen once lived in was converted into a museum. By 1987, the tourism sector had become a tentpole of Kenya’s economy, bringing in approximately $350 million annually. By the end of the decade that figure had grown to $443 million per year, roughly 40 percent of Kenya’s total foreign exchange.
Barack Obama recounted his first visit to Kenya in 1988, writing that he suspected some tourists “came because Kenya, without shame, offered to re-create an age when the lives of whites in forest lands rested comfortably on the backs of the darker races.” He was struck by Nairobi’s stark racial hierarchies, something he hadn’t anticipated seeing in his father’s homeland. “In Kenya,” he wrote, “A white man could still walk through Isak Dinesen’s home and imagine romance with a mysterious young baroness.”
Prior to the violence of colonialism, the 6,000 acres Blixen called her own had belonged to the very “Natives” about whom she rhapsodized in her memoir. Wanton theft is at the core of colonial Kenya, which the British established as a settlers’ frontier, parceling off land to European adventurers. The first batch of settlers received their land grants in 1902. It included British aristocrats like Lords Delamere, Hindlip, and Cranworth, who set the gold standard for a gilded countryside hunter lifestyle. Later, the British government expanded lease offerings and exempted settlers from the land tax, and in 1920, the protectorate officially became a colony. But coffee and cattle, the colonial industries of choice, were expensive to produce, and Kenya earned a reputation as a “big man’s frontier,” a place where only the extremely wealthy could afford to settle.
The Blixens were part of this wave of settlers. Their land, previously Maasai pastoral country and Gikuyu farmland, became “a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills” — Out of Africa’s famous opening line. Ngũgĩ calls settlers like the Blixens “parasites in paradise.” He writes, “Kenya, to them, was a huge winter home for aristocrats, which of course meant big-game hunting and living it up on the backs of a million field and domestic slaves.”
With its warm climate and its stunning landscapes, colonial Kenya was an attractive getaway for European aristocrats looking to escape the winter chill, and colonial planners catered to their needs. In his 1902 book, Garden Cities of To-Morrow, the British urban planner Ebenezer Howard had laid out his ideal “garden city,” which combined the best features of urban and rural life. The parts of Nairobi that were segregated for whites were planned as garden cities, with deliberate care taken, for instance, to plant jacaranda trees.
Meanwhile, Africans were consigned to live in what the architectural historians A. M. Martin and P. M. Bezemer have called “villages on garden city lines.” Africans were not even allowed to settle permanently within city limits. Their settlements, along with those of the Indian workers brought in by the British as railway builders, were viewed as potential public health threats to Europeans and deliberately placed far from white suburbs. A 1941 report by the African Housing Board proposed that this housing strategy would teach “Native” residents to observe elementary rules of hygiene. In white Nairobi, safe from the scourge of non-Europeans, residents could live charmed existences in a green paradise. It’s an idea — and a marketing strategy — that persists for both tourists and residents: Uhuru Kenyatta, Kenya’s President and the scion of the nation’s richest family, made headlines in December for affirming his commitment to restoring Nairobi’s worldwide reputation as a “Green City in the Sun.”
After the Great Depression, Blixen was forced to leave Kenya and sell her family’s now-bankrupt plantation, Karen Coffee Company (which, confusingly, was either named after Blixen or her cousin). The buyer, developer Remi Martin, subdivided the land into ten- and twenty-acre plots and kept the name “Karen.” Heralded by advertisements in the early 1930s as a place for “contentment in retirement,” the new estate boasted such activities as golf, tennis, polo, fishing, and shooting. “All the Amenities without the Disadvantages of Town,”
“A.K.A Upper Kibra
After Kenya declared independence from British rule in 1963, there came a flood of renamings. Schools, suburbs, and roads were rechristened in ways that spoke to a new idea of what it meant to be authentically Kenyan. In Nairobi, “Queens Way” became “Mama Ngina Street,” and roads named after the first four colonial commissioners were redesignated for African leaders: Dedan Kimathi, Muindi Mbingu, Daudi Dabasso Wabera, and Mbiyu Koinange, respectively.
One appellation that escaped the fate of the rest was “Karen” — the name of a Nairobi suburb, presumably christened for the Baroness Karen Blixen, the Danish writer also known as Isak Dinesen. Karen Estate lies seventeen kilometers west of the city centre and is one of a few Nairobi suburbs where tall jacarandas loom large, straddling long driveways onto huge mansions with plush gardens. It hosts diplomats, powerful business people, the upper strata of Kenya’s political class, expatriates, and much of Kenya’s privileged white, Asian, and Black populations.
Karen’s contemporary ethos was unintentionally revealed in a New York Times Style story about the suburb’s upscale boutiques in which every single shop-owner and fashion designer mentioned is a white woman, including the Swedish proprietor of a shop called “Bush Princess.” Karen, we learn, is “home to some of the city’s most intriguing and exclusive places to shop.” The two African women pictured, only one of them named, are both floor staff. The colonial undertones are even less veiled in a 1985 story in The Washington Post that devoted copious print inches to explaining the pains white homeowners in the “horsey suburb” took to protect their houses and “well-trimmed hedges” from Kenyan robbers. In Karen today, you can breakfast with the endangered Rothschild giraffes at Giraffe Manor, or adopt an elephant at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. And, of course, you can visit the Karen Blixen Museum, in the house where the baroness once lived.
Karen Blixen, a Danish aristocrat, moved to Kenya at the height of Empire, in 1913, with her new husband, 15,000 Danish crowns, and the intention to start a coffee farm. It was only later, after she returned to Denmark in 1931, that she gradually found fame as a writer. Her 1937 memoir, Out of Africa, offers a record of her time in Kenya, detailing her relationships with her lovers, her servants, and the two thousand “Natives” who lived on her farm. As Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, the grand old man of Kenyan letters, later wrote, “As if in compensation for unfulfilled desires and longings, the baroness turned Kenya into a vast erotic dreamland in which her several white lovers appeared as young gods and her Kenyan servants as usable curs and other animals.”
And dreamland she made it. On safari, Blixen’s servants carried bathwater to her on their heads across the plain, and, she writes, “when we outspanned at noon, they constructed a canopy against the sun, made out of spears and blankets, for me to rest under.” She imagines herself a judge to the Kikuyu squatters, claiming at one point that she looks at her cook “with something of a creator’s eyes.” To Blixen, the Africans existed if not quite at the level of the bush animals, then somewhere just above them. “The Natives,” she writes, “could withdraw into a world of their own, in a second, like the wild animals which at an abrupt movement from you are gone—simply are not there.” She believed that “the umbilical cord of Nature has, with them, not been quite cut through.”
Deserted by her husband, Karen threw herself into the hedonistic social life available to the European gentry in the colony. When the Duke and Prince of Wales came to visit, she made the local Kikuyu perform a dance in their honor. She and her lover, British big game hunter Denys Finch-Hatton, oscillated in and out of the “Happy Valley set,” described by Ulf Aschan, the godson of Blixen’s husband, as “relentless in their pursuit to be amused, more often attaining this through drink, drugs, and sex.” A popular question among British aristocrats at the time was, “Are you married or do you live in Kenya?” None of this appears in Blixen’s memoir, which skips over wild parties in favor of providing lush detail about the landscape and the “Natives.”
In The New York Review of Books, American critic Jane Kramer called Out of Africa “without a doubt the most irresistible prose ever written about East Africa.” A bestseller, it was selected for the Book-of-the-Month Club, included in the Modern Library series “100 Best Nonfiction Books,” and translated into multiple languages. Blixen’s name was regularly floated as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. When Ernest Hemingway — a regular hunting partner of Blixen’s husband, Bror — won the prize in 1954, he suggested it should have gone to her instead. (She was reportedly closest in 1961, when she was passed over for Ivo Andrić.)
In 1985, the memoir was adapted into a film directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. The plot, which draws on several additional sources including Blixen’s second memoir, Shadows on the Grass, and Judith Thurman’s biography of Blixen, is primarily focused on Blixen’s romance with Finch-Hatton. It brought in $227.5 million at the box office and swept the Oscars, winning seven awards including Best Picture and Best Director, and propelling the image of Kenya as a romantic gateway into popular imagination.
The year after the film’s release, Kenya saw a dramatic spike in tourism (from 152,000 visitors to 176,000 in a single year), and the house Blixen once lived in was converted into a museum. By 1987, the tourism sector had become a tentpole of Kenya’s economy, bringing in approximately $350 million annually. By the end of the decade that figure had grown to $443 million per year, roughly 40 percent of Kenya’s total foreign exchange.
Barack Obama recounted his first visit to Kenya in 1988, writing that he suspected some tourists “came because Kenya, without shame, offered to re-create an age when the lives of whites in forest lands rested comfortably on the backs of the darker races.” He was struck by Nairobi’s stark racial hierarchies, something he hadn’t anticipated seeing in his father’s homeland. “In Kenya,” he wrote, “A white man could still walk through Isak Dinesen’s home and imagine romance with a mysterious young baroness.”
Prior to the violence of colonialism, the 6,000 acres Blixen called her own had belonged to the very “Natives” about whom she rhapsodized in her memoir. Wanton theft is at the core of colonial Kenya, which the British established as a settlers’ frontier, parceling off land to European adventurers. The first batch of settlers received their land grants in 1902. It included British aristocrats like Lords Delamere, Hindlip, and Cranworth, who set the gold standard for a gilded countryside hunter lifestyle. Later, the British government expanded lease offerings and exempted settlers from the land tax, and in 1920, the protectorate officially became a colony. But coffee and cattle, the colonial industries of choice, were expensive to produce, and Kenya earned a reputation as a “big man’s frontier,” a place where only the extremely wealthy could afford to settle.
The Blixens were part of this wave of settlers. Their land, previously Maasai pastoral country and Gikuyu farmland, became “a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills” — Out of Africa’s famous opening line. Ngũgĩ calls settlers like the Blixens “parasites in paradise.” He writes, “Kenya, to them, was a huge winter home for aristocrats, which of course meant big-game hunting and living it up on the backs of a million field and domestic slaves.”
With its warm climate and its stunning landscapes, colonial Kenya was an attractive getaway for European aristocrats looking to escape the winter chill, and colonial planners catered to their needs. In his 1902 book, Garden Cities of To-Morrow, the British urban planner Ebenezer Howard had laid out his ideal “garden city,” which combined the best features of urban and rural life. The parts of Nairobi that were segregated for whites were planned as garden cities, with deliberate care taken, for instance, to plant jacaranda trees.
Meanwhile, Africans were consigned to live in what the architectural historians A. M. Martin and P. M. Bezemer have called “villages on garden city lines.” Africans were not even allowed to settle permanently within city limits. Their settlements, along with those of the Indian workers brought in by the British as railway builders, were viewed as potential public health threats to Europeans and deliberately placed far from white suburbs. A 1941 report by the African Housing Board proposed that this housing strategy would teach “Native” residents to observe elementary rules of hygiene. In white Nairobi, safe from the scourge of non-Europeans, residents could live charmed existences in a green paradise. It’s an idea — and a marketing strategy — that persists for both tourists and residents: Uhuru Kenyatta, Kenya’s President and the scion of the nation’s richest family, made headlines in December for affirming his commitment to restoring Nairobi’s worldwide reputation as a “Green City in the Sun.”
After the Great Depression, Blixen was forced to leave Kenya and sell her family’s now-bankrupt plantation, Karen Coffee Company (which, confusingly, was either named after Blixen or her cousin). The buyer, developer Remi Martin, subdivided the land into ten- and twenty-acre plots and kept the name “Karen.” Heralded by advertisements in the early 1930s as a place for “contentment in retirement,” the new estate boasted such activities as golf, tennis, polo, fishing, and shooting. “All the Amenities without the Disadvantages of Town,”