News update ..... 'ex Africa semper aliquid novi'

('Out of Africa, a new liquid' .... !! )






Fanta Zero is about to be produced in Kenya !    No-sugar drinks are popular in most of Europe and the US, but Kenyan Fanta has always been a real sugar-hit drink !     I love it !!!

~   ~   ~   ~   ~

And something I'd never heard of, a new AIDS/HIV preventative, which can only be good news in countries where HIV is such a problem:-

"Speaking yesterday at the third International HIV Research for Prevention Conference in Madrid, Spain, various experts gave presentations on the performance of selected countries.

Dr Linda Gail Bekker of the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation in Cape Town, and immediate president of the International Aids Society, said Kenya's response to HIV prevention should be supported.

"Kenya's response and approach to HIV prevention is the best in Africa. It is the first on the continent to put its prevention road map together, which is something we can't fail to mention," Dr Bekker said.

She said that despite resource constraints, Kenya had ensured that pre-exposure prophylaxis drugs were available.

"There is a lot we can learn from Kenya. It has taken the hotspot mapping approach to ensure that those who need the drugs are not left out," she said.

Kenya is the second African country, after South Africa, to have pre-exposure prophylaxis guidelines.

Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) drugs join other prevention and treatment methods already in use. Other strategies include giving anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs to people who are not infected with HIV, but are at high risk of infection. These drugs reduce the chances of HIV infection.  (I suppose for negative women married to positive men, as well as others.)

In 2014, the World Health Organisation recommended offering PrEP to men who have sex with men, and in September broadened its recommendation to include all people at substantial risk of HIV infection as an additional prevention choice.

PrEP was first approved by the USA Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2012 before other countries followed suit.

The Kenya Pharmacy and Poisons Board approved use of oral PreP in December 2015.

In April last year, oral PrEP, the anti-retroviral drug Truvada, which is a combination of tenofovir and emtricitabine, was approved by the drug regulatory authority for use in the country.

When taken daily and consistently, the drug reduces new infections by 95 per cent.

According to data from PrEP Watch, the number of PrEP users in Kenya stands at 26,000 against 37,000, which is the overall target from all projects (planned and ongoing) being carried out in the country.

(From The Daily Nation)

What good news !    Anything which can halt the spread of this dreadful disease is wonderful; I have had friends die from HIV, and have friends who are managing to live with it, thanks to ARV's.   But in many parts of Africa, ARV's are freely available, but they have to be taken regularly, and with food; what happens if you are so poor that regular food intake is a luxury, not as in the west, something we consume (often to excess) without a thought.   And supposing you live 100 miles from the nearest clinic where free ARV's can be supplied ?   

  

                      Pretty, but deadly ... the HIV virus.

Illiteracy

About 758 million people around the world are illiterate, according to data from the U.N. education agency, UNESCO. Of these, two thirds are women. Of all the regions in Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest level of illiteracy compared to other regions.

So its good to read about an initiative in Narok County, in southern Kenya.   In the Narok area, illiteracy may be partly related to cultural reasons, as among the Maasai community in Kenya, where until recently, most girls were denied an opportunity to go to school, as they would undergo FGM (female genital mutilation) and be married off.

In August last year, Action Africa Help-International, an NGO working in the area, introduced the women to basic literacy skills, opening them up to the world of reading and writing so they could run their businesses and be economically independent.  

Girl circumcision led to the feeling that they had become adults, leading to early marriage, and thus barred them from getting an education. Adult education of the women is effective in ensuring that abuse and domestic violence against them reduces and, as a result, helps them be part of decision-making on matters involving themselves and their families.

(Based on an article in The Epoch Times)

Google 'street view' arrives in Kisumu !

So of course, I had a 'walk' along Achieng' Oneko Road, the walk I used to do most days into town from the Mill Hill guest House ! 

The first thing I noticed, with some sadness, was that the huge pots of ferns and orchids outside the front door of the house have gone .... 

(Two of my photos from 2017 below)

There appears to be building work going on; I had heard the place (now all the Catholic fathers have left) was going to be turned into a hotel ?

(Notice pots gone ...)

(Two screen shots from Google street view)

I wonder what the obviously new unfinished building just to the left of the gates is going to be ?

But I see that the trees outside the front of the building are still there, and that the one I helped Patrick plant about five years ago, is thriving and getting quite big !

The economic goldmine in the 'Happy Valley' legacy

(Report from 'Standard Digital')

Kenya’s Happy Valley — popularised through books and movies, and better known as Wanjohi Valley in Nyandarua County — was the playground for English and some not-so-English aristocrats in the 1920s and 1930s. The key players included Idina Sackville, Lord Errol and a host of other less-known characters who took drugs and died prematurely, either through suicide or were killed. Lord Errol’s death has remained a mystery and there is no sign it will ever be resolved. Enough has been written about the Happy Valley, but what about its edges, the hills around it? 

 After reading 'The Ghosts of Happy Valley', I contacted the writer, Juliet Barnes, and Solomon Gitau, her guide, and we ventured beyond Happy Valley. We took a newly gravelled road from Ol Kalou past the former home of Happy Valley member Morgan Glenville, which is by Malewa River, the main feeder of Lake Naivasha, and up the escarpment. The view of Happy Valley to the south as you climb the escarpment and Lake Ol Bollosat to the north is simply breathtaking.  We were in Shamata, which in the Maa language means ‘high place’. This cold place is to the east of Happy Valley. Here, other pioneer settlers, who were not as well known as the Happy Valley lot, built elegant colonial houses.

The first house we visited was formerly owned by Nigel Trent and is next to Aberdare Forest. It offers a scenic view of the Laikipia plains, and the Rift Valley and its lakes. The house looks modest by Happy Valley standards. The new owner of the house has done a good job maintaining it, 50 years after Nigel’s departure. 

The next house was in Kaheho town, about four kilometres from Nigel’s. Another big colonial house nearby has been partly demolished, and is part of a secondary school. The original owner was probably called Penrose, but was nicknamed Kihuko, loosely translated as ‘mole’s place’. A kilometre away on the gravelled road to Nyahururu is another colonial house, which is now used by the assistant chief. It has remnants of a sheep dip and fuel pumps, and broken glass panes have been replaced with wood. The owner was called Muhuhu, a gossip. His real name is not known. About five kilometres east is another colonial house, with a roof made with wood shingles. It looks abandoned. The owner was called Dyer, and from the design, it looks like the house was for his workers. 

Yet another three kilometres further east we found a well-maintained house formerly owned by Michael Hooper. The house has a wood and mabati roof. The current occupant told us that Hooper descendants have visited the house. Another five kilometres to the north is the home of General Wainwright; his sister’s house is nearby. We were told he sold land to all the other wazungus. The house veranda faces the Aberdares, and the back of it, the Laikipia plains. If there’s something these settlers knew well, it was choosing locations. The house is now public property and is used as a dispensary and village polytechnic.  It is not well maintained. 

Time did not allow further exploration, but there are other colonial houses scattered on the edges of the Happy Valley in the former ‘white highlands’, including that built by Lord Egerton. Curiously, while Australia was started by prostitutes and convicts, Kenya attracted Eton-educated aristocrats !  

It seems that for over 50 years, no one has realised that these houses are goldmines. If well packaged, they could bring Nyandarua County and other counties lots of money through tourism. Many Kenyans and the descendants of the original owners would love to visit these houses, at a fee. But they need to be repaired. I recall paying a few dollars to visit a palatial home built around 1750 on the shores of the Mississippi river.  Nyandarua and other counties with colonial homes have been sitting on a goldmine. 

The distance from Nairobi is another asset — a two-hour drive and you are at Wainwright’s house, admiring nature. Why can’t we create narratives around Happy Valley and its edges? I am very surprised that though Lord Errol is buried in Kiambu, no one talks about it. We seem not to realise that history can be packaged and sold handsomely. In the US, both Illinois and Kentucky claim Abraham Lincoln was born there. How else do you attract tourists?

More importantly is that with time, Kenya will have a critical mass of people who can appreciate nature and history. Such houses will come in handy. And whether we hate colonialism or not, it is part of our history. Maybe one way to reduce the anger against colonialism is to make money from it. I kept wondering where the owners of such great houses went. Some are still around in Kenya. I wonder how they felt when it became clear that they would have to leave their homes, built in the middle of nowhere, long after they had sold their land in England. One of the Happy Valley lot sold a home in the U.K.owned by his family since 1611. 

The ghosts of Happy Valley may never be put to rest, and we may never know who killed Lord Errol. But it makes a lot economic sense to make money from history. It is always there and can be counted as one of our renewable resources. Don’t 10 million people a year go to see pyramids, which are actually graves, in Egypt? Nyandarua and other counties in the former white highlands are sitting on a goldmine that just needs extraction.

(The writer is X.N. Iraki,  senior lecturer, University of Nairobi School of Business)

The Mountains of Kong .... again !!

I was throwing out the newspapers from the last week, and look what I found !   I'd been too busy to read through them properly, and just did the crosswords.

The Mountains of Kong !!

(Regular readers of my blog will recall I was fascinated by this mysterious ... and probably imaginary ... range of west African mountains, south of the Sahara.   Goodness, I see it was over a year ago !)

See http://luolaughter.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-mountains-of-kong.html 

The article in the Telegraph magazine is actually about old maps, or even maps of imaginery places.    I love old maps, whether they be of the UK or Africa, or Wainwrights guides to the Lake District fells.  Sandi Toksvig writes part of the article, wherein she says:   "How about the non-existent Mountains of Kong, which were falsely created when Major James Rennell charted them on a map in 1798 and that survived for almost a century ?  Based on reports by explorers, he believed that such a chain of mountains could explain the watershed between the Niger basin and the Gulf of Guinea.  In fact, he believed it so much that he invented them."

Fascinating stuff !

Still here ...

... computer/internet problems.   

Next instalment coming very soon !

Meanwhile, have a few pictures ...............

                              I love his wooliness !    

Omieri the snake !!

Well this is different !    (And something I'd never heard of ....)

"After three decades of anxious waiting, Kisumu residents will finally have a glimpse of the legendary snake, Omieri, which has been associated with several cultural beliefs in Nyanza.  The snake, which died on July 9, 1987, will be the highlight of the 3rd edition of the Kenya National Cultural Celebration for Unesco (Knatcom), which will take place in Kisumu beginning Wednesday to Sunday.

HUGE CROWDS

On Tuesday, a team of workers from the Nairobi National Museum, that has been the 'resting' place of the snake since it died, were busy installing a grass-thatched mud hut at the Jomo Kenyatta Sports Ground for viewing by the locals, attracting a huge crowd.

Residents could not hide the joy of finally seeing the snake that they had all heard mysterious stories about, since most of them were born after the snake had died.  "We hear it was the biggest snake to have ever been seen in this (western) region, I was born when it had died so I never saw it. I am happy it has been brought back home and we will see it," beamed Mr Erick Omondi, a local.

An autopsy done on the reptile revealed that it had died of a gastro-intestinal tract infection. Prior to its death, National Wildlife Conservation, the now Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) did all they could in attempts to keep it alive.  It is reported that in February 27, 1987, some villagers in Nyakach set fire at Omieri’s abode causing the snake severe burns, before KWS  moved to its rescue.

With the help of Kisumu National Museum, KWS immediately took the snake to Nairobi National Museum for treatment and special care then returned it  in May 21, 1987, with the hope that its condition would improve due to the warm climate in the region.  At Kisumu National Museum, Omieri was occasionally fed on chicken before it developed an oral infection and was unable to feed, which saw the snake quarantined for close observation but was attacked by a fungal infection that led to mouth rot.  Animal experts says that if snakes are held captive for a long time, they suffer fungal infection and many usually die of mouth rot.

Dr Purity Kiora, the Director of Antiquity Sites and Monuments at the Kenya National Museums, told reporters in Kisumu that the snake might not be kept for long at the exhibitions due to complications in preserving it.  "We can only have the public view it for just a short period of time because to preserve it for people to see, it has to be in a conducive environment. It has to be in a place with little light and air tight,” said Dr Kiora.

She said the snake will be at the site till Sunday after which they will take it to Kisumu Museum where it will stay for about a month, then its homeland Nyakach and back to the laboratory in Nairobi.  A ceremony will be held for the snake with Nyakach elders invited to tell its story. The snake measured 5.3m and weighed 58kg and was always associated with long rains in Nyanza region.

Other activities at the festival themed “Enhancing National Cohesion, Identity and Pridewill” include multicultural performances from different counties, a food fair dubbed “Fish-fiesta”, performances by Benga musicians, public talks and a fashion show.  There will also be excursions at Kit Mikayi shrine, Weeping Stone, Kisumu Museum, Got Ramogi Hills, Hippo Point, Dunga and Lwanga Beaches.

Kisumu Governor Anyang’ Nyong’o lauded Knatcom and the National Museums of Kenya for staging the event in the lakeside town and promised the visitors  a good time during their stay.  On her part, the Kenya National Commission for Unesco, Dr Angeline Njoka, heaped praises on Kisumu County for the great partnership towards staging of the celebration.  "We are grateful to Governor Nyong'o for agreeing to host us in Kisumu, the county boasts of a rich cultural heritage that we wanted to plug into, we expect great performances,” she said.

(News from The Daily Nation)

I know all the places mentioned towards the end of this article, but not the Weeping Stone - this is obviously something I have to find out more about.

Watch this space !

Birds, bugs, and bats that go bump in the night !

I think in reading back over the first letters we wrote home I tended to exaggerate and go for the startling, like stories about cockroaches, and how the chickens we bought to eat arrive live, with one leg tied to string, which is then tied to a bush ... "... we have to buy chickens live as they keep fresh that way !"

The cockroaches, which I'd never seen before, were enormous ... nearly two inches in length, and they scurried out from under the cupboard and stove in the kitchen at night .... not one or two or them, but dozens !   

By the end of our first week, we were employing Joseph Adhiambo (photo on right) as a 'house-boy'.  I had thought not to have 'staff' but it was soon obvious that he would be useful for doing our market shopping, as he could bargain in the local language.   He arrived one day, brought along to us by a (white) missionary who explained that Joseph had no father and an elderly mother, and needed to earn money to save for school fees.  He assured us Joseph would work hard and as a mission boy, was honest.   He was about 14 or 15 (he didn't know how old he was) and dressed in ragged clothes, with patches and tears.  He had on his feet a pair of cut down wellies, which had had pieces of rubber sewn over the holes.  He was to be paid two shillings for five hours work, which was more than the government rate, and 'perks' .... usually spare food.  In 1968, an English pound, was 17 Kenya shillings, so about half a crown or so for his wages ?  

The house we lived in at first, was about 30 or 40 years old, with a corrugated iron roof.  The ceilings were nailed directly onto the roof rafters, and were made of some sort of compressed straw board, which mice (rats ?) had gnawed in places.   Electricity for lighting from dusk (about 6.30) until 9.30, when the school generator was switched off and we had to use a paraffin lamp.  It was often easier to go to bed early and get up just before dawn.  One night there was a terrific storm, with wind blowing and whistling through under the mabati (iron sheets) and there was a tremendous crash, and half the bedroom ceiling descended onto us in our beds .... complete with years of bat droppings, dead mice, and goodness knows what else !  The bats which were in the roof sheltering from the storm, fluttered around us in the dark; then by the light of our torches and ultimately the paraffin lamp, we could see what a mess there was !   I didn't write about it in the letters home, but seem to remember we spent the remainder of the night dozing in the sitting room chairs, flapping at the mozzies .... and the bats !

"The view from the house, on a slight hill, is wonderful, looking west towards Uganda, 20 miles away.  We look out over African farms, which at first glance look like scrub land, but I suppose are more like English small-holdings or allotments, with strange crops growing all mixed up in small plots.  There are banana and paw-paw trees, cassava plants, maize and millet.  And mango trees ... which reminds me; can you find a recipe for mango chutney please ?  

The people in this area mostly don't speak Swahili, but Dholuo, which is totally different to Swahili, so we are having to learn another language, as well as continuing with Swahili, which is used in town and the country further east."

We spent most of our spare time bird watching, and had taken out mist nets in order to catch and ring the birds we captured.  Catching them helped us to identify all the many new and wonderful birds we were seeing; having the bird in the hand and the books on the table, made an impossible task a little easier, but at first we had to let birds go that we couldn't identify, but it got easier.   This is the first ever bird we caught at Ng'iya ... the incredibly coloured pygmy kingfisher.   

This is the wildlife we had come to Kenya hoping to see !!

Being moved around !

"13th September, 1968   

Dear Mum .... we reached Kisumu today about 2 p.m., only to be told we weren't going to be posted to Maseno School (which the Min of Ed. had told us yesterday) but to Maranda Secondary School (which had been the second school they offered yesterday) but that the house being built for us wasn't finished, SO we are to live at this school (Ng'iya Girls School) and teach here temporarily .... note the latest address on the back !  IF we are moved again, the head-mistress here will know where we are and will forward any mail !  "

We were obviously thrown into what we were to become used to during the next eleven years .... chaos in governmental organisation !   Welcome to Africa !!

"The house we have been given to live in has sitting room, 2 bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen of sorts, outside earth toilet  ***   and a wood store (wood for the kitchen stove).  Its about 30 years old, bungalow type with corrugated iron roof, so it has rather a lot of cockroaches which appear after dark, and also 3" long centipedes, but we have found some geckos and brought them into the house as we believe they eat cockroaches.  We've also got bats in the roof, and monkeys and parrots in the trees just outside.  Poinsettia's grow like weeds here and there are jacaranda trees and bougainvillea's everywhere." 


 ***      http://luolaughter.blogspot.com/2017/06/only-in-africa-2.html

12th September, 1968 .... fifty years ago today !!

Today (actually typing this on 12th September, 2018 !) is the fifty year anniversary of when I first arrived in Kenya. 

I've found two letters describing our journey;  "... we left from Norwich station and took the train to Liverpool Street, where we took a taxi all the way to Heathrow ... "   (must have cost a fortune !) ... "we had about 90 lbs of luggage each, so really the bus and tube were out of the question ..."   We met up with two friends, fellow bird enthusiasts, who were also going out to the Kisumu area, and saw that they too, were each carrying a volume of Praed and Grant for their 'light' reading on the plane !  Each volume weighed in at around 4 lbs, so couldn't be packed when we considered they weighed as much as two pairs of shoes, the iron and a transistor radio !

"We left Heathrow on time, in a Super VC10, no less !  Its a very sumptuous plane"   (Notice my excitement in this letter to my mother I started writing from Entebbe !)  "We came down in Rome for re-fuelling at 10.30 at night, and then flew on above the clouds, through the night, passing over a fantastic thunderstorm with lightning flashes below us, and landed at Entebbe in Uganda at dawn for breakfast.  It was a bit humid at Entebbe which is near Lake Victoria, but only 68⁰F.  Some passengers left the plane at Entebbe, while the rest of us flew on to Nairobi."

" Just at the moment" (I continued the letter to my mother on the plane) ".. we can look down and see, through the gaps in the clouds, the Kavirondo Gulf, which is the bit of Lake Victoria near where we are being posted.   We have picked out the town of Homa Bay, but the clouds are drifting about, and we can't see more."

"(Later) ... we have now arrived at Embakasi, the Nairobi airport.   We had a long wait for our luggage to be taken off the plane; one handle had been ripped off a case, but nothing was lost, and there were no problems with the customs or health people.  We were met by an African from the Ministry of Education, who has now dumped us on seats and said we are to wait for a mini-bus, which will take us to Kisumu, we think, but that's not certain yet; we may have to stay in Nairobi for a day or so to get work permits, etc. sorted out.

"Must post this now at the airport, having bought some beautiful Kenyan stamps.  I'm sending your letter with an elephant stamp !"

(Posted 10.30 a.m., Nairobi time, 12th September)

~   ~   ~   ~   ~ 

(Continuing from a letter sent to parents-in-law):   "We were whisked off with our 90 lbs each of luggage, into town and taken to Brunners Hotel, on Muindu Mbingu Street, just off Kenyatta Avenue (do you know it ?)  (They has stayed in Nairobi a few times when on holiday from Aden).  There we had baths and lunch, and then the men were taken to the Ministry of Education for three hours.  We were booked in for the night at Brunners, which I would describe as a rather faded colonial sort of hotel.  High rooms, with lazily turning ceiling fans, and wide verandas opening onto an inner courtyard."

I remember that I went with H. (the other wife) for a walk along Kenyatta Avenue after lunch; a lovely wide avenue with very little traffic, and not many people about either.   Some Maasai strolled past, wearing just a red blanket (nothing else at all !) and carrying spears.  (Not a sight to be seen since the late1960's).   There were several 'colonial' type elderly European men, wearing those wide legged baggy khaki shorts, and veldskoen with no socks.   

This is Africa, I thought !    I'm HERE !!  

10th September, 1968 .... fifty years back.

"Only a day to go before we leave for Kenya.   We've said goodbye to my mother, and I feel a little sad at leaving her so soon after my fathers death just a few months ago.

All our luggage is packed; tomorrow we travel to Heathrow for the flight in the evening.  Quite exciting ... only the third flight in my life .... the first two having been to and back from Aden in 1966 in a DC-7-C, a propellor plane.  (Father-in-law was posted there, seconded to the R.A.F.)   Tomorrow we fly on a VC-10 .... the modern Jumbo Jet.   

I wonder what it will be like to set foot in Africa ?   It has been my ambition since a child, when my grandfather used to tell me about the early explorers in the 'dark' continent.   I'd read Livingstone, Elspeth Huxley, Gerald Durrell and of course, 'Out of Africa', and seen the 'Born Free' film recently ....as well as reading Joy Adamsons books.  I don't suppose for a minute it'll be like any of those books .... but one can hope."

September, 1968 ....yes, sixty-eight !

This is the month I had hoped to return to Kenya for a 'swan song' visit, but that's not to be.  It would have marked the fifty year anniversary of my first setting foot in Africa on 12th September 1968.

So what were we doing in the weeks before we left what a friend of mine so charmingly calls 'Blighty' ?   Well, we had been living in a two roomed rented flat on the second floor in a tower block in Selly Oak, Birmingham.   

   

(Goodness me, what a dreary looking building it was !)

We had given up our teaching jobs and were ready to go off on an adventure !!  Teaching contracts with the Kenyan Government were organised through the Ministry of Overseas Development; I vaguely remember that they organised a sort of induction weekend for new ex-pat teachers going out to Africa, somewhere in Surrey ?   We didn't go on it as we had already booked a camping trip to France before we left for Africa.

We had furniture, books, kitchen equipment, etc. etc. to dispose of before we left.  Some things we sold, and then took our furniture and 'stuff' to my mothers for her to store in a spare room in her Norfolk cottage, assuming we'd be back in 21 months and would need furniture, etc.  Then, we never assumed it would be nearly 11 years before we were back living in the UK.  We packed various things we thought would be useful to have in Kenya, to be shipped out.   (Here I need to check the archive of letters I've mentioned before, to see if we sent sea luggage in advance .... those letters are proving to be very useful !)   I know some things went air freight.  

During our last six weeks in Birmingham we had masses of 'jabs', against yellow fever, cholera, hepatitis of two types, tetanus, polio, typhoid, etc.   And then ordered anti-malarial tablets; we started our time in Kenya taking paludrine every day, but after a few years, it was thought to be no longer effective, so we switched to another anti-malarial.   

The UK government provided ex-pats going to the tropics with a little book called 'The Preservation of Personal Health in Warm Climates' .... with enough gory details to put anyone off actually going !   It came complete with photographs of tse-tse flies, anopheles mosquitoes, bed-bugs, jigger sores, head lice and ticks ... and diagrams as to the correct and incorrect way of hanging a mosquito net.    We read up on sleeping sickness, typhus, bilharzia and plague; leprosy, rabies and syphilis ... snake bites .... scorpions .......... 

But we went ...........  read on .........

Kisumu shopping in 1969

Remember my box of letters home 'from the front' (Nyanza, actually) ??     Looking through some of them, I found this shopping list from June 1969, which I had sent home for my mother to see .... think I was trying to impress her !

We were living at Maranda Secondary School at the time, a few miles from Bondo, west of Kisumu and only a mile or two from the lake.  Shopping meant a drive of about 40 miles over an appalling road, and usually took about two hours, to allow for punctures or broken exhaust pipe or some other car disaster.  So shopping was done about once every three to four weeks, and meant an all day trip, leaving about 7 a.m., and getting back after dark ... we usually met up with friends in town for lunch, and had a swim at the club !

      So it would seem we bought 25 lbs white sugar (actually the gritty, 'dirty' sugar which nowadays is clean and sold here as 'golden granulated' cane sugar);  3 lbs brown sugar; 20 lbs flour; tin baking powder (no self raising flour available).   

      12 packets biscuits, 10 pkts cream crackers.  

       32 pints UHT milk, 3 lbs milk powder, 2 lbs tea, 32 shillings worth of coffee (no idea what quantity that would be ... maybe a large tin of instant Nescafe ?) and 2 lbs ground coffee.

      12 tins fruit, 12 tins baked beans, 12 tins green beans, 12 tins carrots, 12 tins peas.  (We could buy some fresh veg in Bondo market [3 miles away] but usually only tomatoes, onions and sukuma weki - a type of strongly flavoured kale.)

       20 tins meat, (Spam, corned beef, tinned stewing beef) 6 tins soup, 2 packet soups.  Meat was available in Bondo on a Friday, but often meant waiting until the butcher had finished killing the cow.

       12 jellies, 6 tins jam, 6 chocolate puddings (Instant Whip type).

       Bottle HP sauce, jar pickle, salt, 6 squash base (this was a concentrated squash that had to be mixed with sugar and water to make 4 bottles of ordinary squash.)

       Tin of yeast; tin of cocoa; 3 large packs corn flakes.

       6 x 1lb. tins Blue Band (margarine); 2 tins Kimbo (a sort of lard cooking fat).

       12 Fanta lemon (fizzy pop)

      36 eggs; 2 packs porridge oats, 2 packs spaghetti, 2 lbs rice (the weevils were not charged for .... nor those in the flour).  1 lb sultanas.

       24 boxes matches, 12 loo rolls, 6 packs OMO, 3 cans IT  (pyrethrum insect spray), 3 tubs VIM, 1 Zal (absolutely no idea now what that was), 2 Colgate tooth paste, 2 bottles shampoo, 8 bars soap.   

(An email from a friend today suggests Zal might be Izal .... that hard nasty toilet paper, but I don't think so, as we already had 12 loo rolls on the list).

(Another email [I've stirred up interest here !] suggests that it IS Izal .... which apart from a nasty scratchy loo paper, 50 years ago was also a disinfectant, in a bottle .... a bit like Savlon or Dettol .... this sounds much more likely !)

       1 lb Cheddar cheese, 1 round cheese (maybe Edam ??) 2 lbs butter, 2 loaves bread (I was making bread every two days), 1 lb bacon, 1 lb sausages.

Living by myself now, I am staggered at the quantity of food two of us consumed in a month, plus any visitors, plus small rations for the 'staff' (usually sugar, tea and soap).   We bought all this in Kisumu Grocers, and then went on to the town market for fresh vegetables and fruit, and perhaps fresh fish.   We carried a cold box with ice packs in for the butter, cheese and any fresh meat or fish we bought; even so, the meat and fish was warm by the time we got it home to the fridge (paraffin powered), so had to be eaten quickly.

Kisumu Grocers to the right of the clock tower in 1970.   

Run by a lovely Asian family, the daughter of whom I met many years later on a train in Canada !!

More on the Lothagam burial site

I found a slightly different report; basically saying a lot of the same details, but with interesting interpretations and comparisons .... and gerbils !

About 5,000 years ago, a tribe of roving herders paused by a lake in what is now Kenya to bury their dead. Their undertaking (no pun intended) evolved into one of the most massive and monumental construction projects Africa had ever seen.

After more than 450 years of digging into bedrock, piling up sandstone slabs and ritually burying generation after generation of the deceased, the tribe completed what researchers now consider the earliest and largest monumental cemetery in eastern Africa: a sprawling field of rocky rings, stone columns and burial mounds known as the Lothagam North Pillar Site.

At only a few feet high apiece, the site's eponymous pillars might not stand as tall or as opulent as other burial monuments of antiquity, like the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt or the Mausoleum of Maussollos in what is now Turkey — and that's what makes them remarkable. According to a new study published in  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Lothagam North was a monument built for the people, by the people. Here, the honored dead are not merely emperors and elites, but rather tribe members of every age and gender, buried side by side without discrimination.

The Lothagam North Pillar Site is the earliest known monumental site in eastern Africa, built by the region's first herders," lead study author Elisabeth Hildebrand, an associate professor at Stony Brook University in New York, said in a statement. "This finding makes us reconsider how we define social complexity and the kinds of motives that lead groups of people to create public architecture."

The first herders in east Africa

The Lothagam North Pillar Site is the oldest of six known monument sites built near Lake Turkana, in Kenya, between 4,000 and 5,000 years ago — a time when diminished rainfall led to retreating shore-lines that revealed new, fertile plains for herbivores to feed on.

In the midst of this environmental shift, culture changed as well. The first herding tribes had just begun spreading into eastern Africa, the researchers wrote in the study. Here, the tribes were forced to develop new technologies, new strategies for survival and new forms of cultural expression.

The construction of the Lothagam North Pillar Site — essentially a public cemetery — was likely one form that expression took. The centerpiece of the site is a raised stone platform roughly 100 feet (30 meters) in diameter, capped with monolithic basalt and sandstone columns hauled from nearly 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) away. Within this platform is a burial chamber that may have once held up to 580 individuals in tightly packed graves, the researchers wrote.

Under the stones

Lothagam North has been studied as an archaeological wonder since the 1960s, but this new study marks the first time researchers have taken an in-depth look at the social hierarchy (or lack thereof) of the site's dead.

According to the researchers, the deceased at Lothagam North were not buried according to any apparent class or caste system. Elders were buried alongside infants, women were buried alongside men and no individual remains were given special treatment that signified them as greater than their deceased peers. Nearly all of the skeletons found in the burial pit were ornamented with colorful jewelry. Many of the dead wore stone beads or jewelry made of ostrich eggshells. Some wore rings and bangles made of hippo ivory, while others wore headdresses made of animal incisors. One corpse wore a headpiece made of 405 gerbil teeth sourced from more than 100 individual gerbils.

Arrayed around the platform, a cluster of large stone circles and cairns(rough burial mounds made of rocks) gave the whole site a monumental footprint that encompassed more than 15,000 square feet (1,400 square meters) of terrain. Radiocarbon dating of the stones in the central platform revealed that the monument took anywhere from 450 to 900 years to complete.

During those centuries of construction, countless friends and neighbors would have gathered at Lothagam North to witness hundreds of ritual burial ceremonies, the researchers wrote.

"The monuments may have served as a place for people to congregate, renew social ties, and reinforce community identity," study co-author Anneke Janzen, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany, said in the statement. "Information exchange and interaction through shared ritual may have helped mobile herders navigate a rapidly changing physical landscape."

According to the researchers, Kenya's herder monuments could help reshape historical perceptions of social change and the emergence of complex societies. Lothagam North may be proof that the construction of massive, long-lasting public monuments do not require the crack of a whip or crowning of a king to carve out a foothold in history, they said. Perhaps all that is required is a strong communal will … and a few hundred gerbil teeth.

Originally published on Live Science.

~   ~   ~   ~   ~  

I love the idea of gerbils teeth being used to make jewelery !