"If you never try the impossible, you will never do a miracle."

 A quote from Father Hans Burgman, and remembered by the people of Pandipieri and Nyalenda whom he served for forty or fifty years.

This is from the Mill Hll, tributes :-

https://millhillmissionaries.com/kenya-pandipieri-kuap-remembers/

"Ex Africa semper aliquid novi"

I couldn't stop laughing when I found this on the BBC news site .... 

"The three armed Kenyan wildlife officers must have been on high alert as they cautiously approached a homestead following reports that a stray lion had been sighted in the area.

But that soon turned to astonishment when all they found was a shopping bag in a hedge - albeit one with a realistic image of a lion's head on it.

A farm hand in Kinyana village, just a kilometre from the Mt Kenya National park, raised the alarm after spotting what he thought was a lion just outside his employer's home.

The bag had been placed in the hedge by the home owner, who had put some avocado tree seedlings in it and wanted to stop them drying out.

Local chief Cyrus Mbijiwe told the BBC that although there had been no recent reports of stray lions in the area, residents had complained that some of their livestock had gone missing.

"We treated the incident with a lot of caution and seriousness. We first ensured everyone was safe then wildlife officials investigated and discovered that it was a bag," the chief said.

The homestead owner was away when the wildlife wardens were called. When she arrived back home, she was told about the lion and was advised to enter her house through the door on the opposite side of the building from the hedge, so she didn't immediately connect the report with the bag containing her seedlings.

The shopping bag was directly below a window and when it was opened, the officials realised that the supposed lion didn't have a body - and was in fact a shopping bag.

Despite the false alarm, the Kenya Wildlife Service said it it lauded "the public for raising an alarm in order to mitigate a possible conflict".

R. I. P. Father Hans Burgman

 

My dear friend from Kisumu, Father Hans Burgman, died in Holland on the 13th March.   He was 94.  May he rest in peace ... and rise in glory.  

The Mill Hill newsletter published this obituary:-

Hans, as we knew him affectionately in Mill Hill, was born on the 16th of December, 1928 in Hengelo, Utrecht, the Netherlands. He was baptised in St. Lambert’s Church in Hengelo on the 19th of December, 1928. He was Confirmed at s’Hertogenbosch in 1942. Hans had two brothers and three sisters. His father was Albertus Burgman, a Draughtsman, and his mother was Franciska Burgman, nee Ahne.

Hans received his Primary education locally at Hengelo at St. Bernardus’ School, but for his Secondary education, since he felt called to the missionary priesthood, he received first in Tilburg (1941-1945), then at Haelen (1945-1947). For his Philosophy studies, Hans attended our College in Roosendaal (1947-1949), then proceeded to Saint Joseph’s College, Mill Hill, London for his Theology studies (1949-1953). It was in the Chapel of St. Joseph’s College that Hans took the Perpetual Oath on the 1st of May, 1952. He was ordained a Mill Hill Priest in the Olympia Stadium in London at the hands of Cardinal Griffen of Westminster, London, on the 12th of July, 1953. Recognising Hans’ academic capabilities, the General Council appointed him to Further Studies in Rome, Italy. There, Hans first obtained a Baccalaureate and Licentiate in Philosophy in 1955, then a Doctorate in Philosophy in 1957, both achieved from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. Other further studies were in Music and the Arts. He was an accomplished musician of the organ, guitar and flute.

Anticipating a successful completion of his studies, the General Council appointed Hans to work in Nsambya, Kampala, Uganda, as an Assistant in Bukerere. At the same time, he was Professor of Philosophy at Ggaba Major Seminary. In 1962, needing his talents nearer to home, Hans was appointed onto the teaching staff at the Missiehuis in Roosendaal, Holland. In 1970, he was elected as a Chapter Delegate. It was while attending the General Chapter that year that he was elected Vicar General and Director for the Home Regions on the General Council.

After his six years of serving on the General Council, in 1977 Hans was appointed to the Archdiocese of Kisumu in Kenya, where he created an Urban Apostolate Team in a slum area of Kisumu City on the shores of Lake Victoria. At that time too, he was engaged in Prison Chaplaincy work. He created many Basic Christian Communities amongst the many dwellers of those poor areas of Kisumu. Hans wrote a great deal about the Church in Western Kenya, his experience of Basic Christian Communities and Urban Apostolates, and the pilgrim Way to Santiago de Compostela.

In 1992, Hans accepted an appointment as parish priest of Saint Joseph’s Parish, Kisumu. By 2009 Hans was ready to retire from parish ministry. However, he continued to work in Kisumu with his team on the Kisumu Urban Apostolate Project based at Pandipieri, a densely populated area of Kisumu City. While there, Hans also took a great interest in the local Mill Hill formation programmes at Luanda and in Nairobi, offering his qualifications and experience generously. By 2017 Hans was ready to retire to the Missiehuis in Vrijland in his native Netherlands.

Wherever he went, Hans made it a priority to learn the local languages, cultures and customs. Indeed, by the time he retired he could converse in his native Nederlands, English, German, French, Italian, DhoLuo, Luganda, as well as in Greek and Latin. Tall in stature and whole-hearted in his commitment to the Lord as a Mill Hill Missionary he won the admiration of so many within the Society and far, far beyond. A man who lived our motto, amare et servire. His funeral rites will be on Saturday the 19th of March (St. Joseph’s Day) at 1.30.pm. in Saint Lambertus basilica in Hengelo in the Netherlands.

What an amazing life he had !   People in Pandipieri will be devastated .... they thought he was a walking, living saint (I suspect he would have denied that but nevertheless loved that !) 

I've found the site of the church in Hengelo and will be able to 'attend' his funeral ....  (which will be in Dutch) but Catholic services are very similar in form to Anglican ones, so I expect I'll be able to follow it.   

Rest in peace, my friend, and rise in glory .....

 

Accession Day, 6th February 1952 .... on 6th February 2022.

Today is the seventhieth anniversary of when our Queen, Elizabeth II, became Queen of Britain and many countries around the world.  

Her father, King George VI, died while she was on a visit to Kenya with her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh.   She had been staying in Treetops ....hence the famous quote "She climbed the tree as a princess and descended as a Queen".

(From the Kenyan 'Nation' newspaper):-

London

Queen Elizabeth II has announced that she wants Camilla, the wife of her heir Prince Charles, to ultimately be known as Queen Consort, as she became the first British monarch to reign for seven decades Sunday.

The 95-year-old said she hoped her daughter-in-law will be known as Queen Consort when Charles accedes to the throne, in a remarkable journey to public acceptance for Camilla after being vilified for her role in the break-up of Charles' marriage to Princess Diana.

Addressing the nation in a written statement on the eve of the 70th anniversary of her accession to the throne, the Queen said that when Charles becomes monarch she hoped the British people would give him and Camilla "the same support that you have given me".

Charles and Camilla, now known as the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall, had a highly publicised relationship that ended their previous marriages and there had been doubts over whether the public would accept her.

They married in 2005, with a royal announcement that Camilla would become known as Princess Consort due to the sensitivity of the issue, but she gradually won plaudits as the future king's loyal wife.

Charles has always been adamant his "darling wife" should receive the title, The Times reported citing a source, with a spokesperson for the couple saying Saturday they were "touched and honoured" by the news.

'Tireless service'

Britain's Sunday newspapers swiftly put the story on their front pages.

"Camilla WILL become Queen," wrote the Daily Mail, while The Sunday Times said "Queen anoints Queen Camilla", saying the move ended "years of controversy and confusion over Camilla's future title".

The announcement came as Elizabeth II began her Platinum Jubilee in subdued fashion at Sandringham in eastern England, the 20,000-acre (8,100-hectare) estate near the north Norfolk coast which is close to her heart.

Four days of festivities are planned for early June, coinciding with the anniversary of her 1953 coronation, including a military parade and music concert, street parties, a nationwide "Big Jubilee Lunch" and a "Platinum Pudding Competition".

On Monday, there will be ceremonial gun salutes in London's Green Park, close to Buckingham Palace, and at Edinburgh Castle in Scotland -- traditionally not held at weekends.

Britain's longest-serving monarch acceded to the throne aged 25 on February 6, 1952, following the death of her father King George VI.

During her reign, she has remained a constant through periods of huge social and political upheaval -- a living link to Britain's post-war and imperial past.

In September 2015, she surpassed Queen Victoria's 63 years and seven months on the throne and, despite some health concerns over the past year, has appeared determined to continue her record-breaking reign.

After husband Philip's death in April last year, the Queen returned to public and official engagements, including hosting world leaders at the G7 summit.

She was forced to slow down on advice from doctors, however, after an overnight hospital stay in October sparked public concern.

Since then, she has largely stayed at Windsor Castle and made few public appearances.

But on Saturday, the Queen held a reception for locals at Sandringham, reportedly her largest in-person public engagement since the autumn health scare.

(Cutting a celebratory cake at Sandringham !)

TWINS born in Kenya .....

Twin baby elephants have been born this week in a rare event at a national reserve in northern Kenya.

The male and female were first spotted by tour guides out on safari at the Samburu reserve at the weekend.

They are only the second set of twin calves ever to have been encountered by local conservation charity Save the Elephants.

The charity says elephant twins account for only 1% of elephant births, with the last known case recorded in 2006.

Speaking to Reuters news agency, charity founder Dr Iain Douglas-Hamilton said this was a critical time for the calves as the last set of twins born 15 years ago had not survived long after birth.

Quite often the mothers do not have enough milk to feed both calves, he added, saying everyone had their "fingers crossed for their survival".

African elephants have the longest gestation period of any mammal. They carry their young for nearly 22 months, and give birth around every four years.

The ivory trade and loss of vital habitat have led to elephants being put on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's Red List of endangered species.

However the elephant population has grown in Kenya in recent years, according to the country's first wildlife census published last year.

Let's hope they survive and that tourists don't interfere with them, trying to get photos.

Two new books ...

 

... written by Meave Leakey, (and her daughter Samira), wife of the sadly recently deceased Richard Leakey.  Its part autobiography, part story of human beings origins in the Lake Rudolf area of northern Kenya.  

She tells of her life with paleo-anthropologist husband Ricahrd; how when he needed a kidney replacement, she gave him one of hers; and how she coped and took over his work in the field when he had a plane crash and lost both his legs.

A remarkable woman ...  

My second new book is this, which I found in our local Oxfam shop:-

It's an hilarious auto-biography of a young boy who lived from a very young age, in Geita, near the southern coast of Lake Victoria, in Tanzania.  He learns Kiswahili as his first language, which neither of his parents speak well, or indeed, at all .... and rapidly learns Swahili swearing, as his friends are all African.  'Jimu' as he is known locally, plays with the local African children and basically runs wild .... until it is time for him to start school, which he hates ... he has to wear shoes and obey strange Wasungu rules in his boarding school in Arusha, in northern Tanzania, a three day journey from his home. 

Richard Leakey - fossil expert, conservationist and politician - another report

 Richard Leakey, who has died days after celebrating his 77th birthday, was a pugnacious man whose achievements were as remarkable as they were diverse.

Born on 19 December 1944 in Kenya's capital Nairobi, he was a world-famous fossil expert, author and conservationist, as well as being an opposition MP, anti-corruption campaigner, economic reformer, and head of the country's civil service.

He was beaten up, threatened and badly injured in a plane crash which saw him lose both his legs.

"I think pressure probably suits me," Leakey once said with urbane understatement.

His first job was studying fossils. His parents, Louis and Mary, were famous archaeologists and palaeontologists who spent decades exploring Kenya's Rift Valley, searching for the origins of mankind.

In his 20s, Leakey almost eclipsed his parents' work, making his own important finds and writing books.

In the late 1980s, Leakey switched careers to take over as head of Kenya's Wildlife Service (KWS) at a time when the organisation was close to collapse and poachers were busy wiping out the country's entire elephant and rhino populations.

Energetic, ruthless and seemingly incorruptible, Leakey told his rangers to shoot poachers on sight and organised the public burning of a huge cache of ivory as a publicity stunt to draw global attention to the threat faced by elephants.

"People were genuinely shocked that ivory was causing elephants to become extinct," he told the BBC's Vivienne Nunis in an interview in September 2021.

Leakey's methods were successful but his combative style earned him plenty of enemies. It was a pattern that would be repeated again and again.

When, in 1993, the single-engine plane he was flying lost power and crashed, many speculated that it was sabotage. Both of his legs were amputated below the knee.

In 1994 Leakey changed careers once again, quitting the KWS to enter the equally ruthless world of Kenyan politics and helping to form an opposition party called Safina to campaign for multi-party democracy.

Tough and honest

"Looking back at my careers, the political side of my life was most rewarding in terms of the country," he told the BBC.

But it was far from being an easy ride.

On one occasion he was whipped by hired thugs. President Moi described him as a racist, an atheist and a foreigner.

But in 1999 President Moi shocked the country by appointing Leakey as head of Kenya's civil service, and of a so-called dream team of reformers hired to rescue a country branded one of the world's most corrupt, from a deepening economic crisis.

Supporters said Leakey had been recognised by the president as the only man tough enough and honest enough to pull Kenya out of its troubles, but questioned whether he would last long enough in the job to do any real good.

Critics said the appointment of a white man with no university education was an insult to Kenyans and one which had clearly been orchestrated by colonial mentalities still lurking in the IMF and World Bank.

In his new job Leakey certainly helped to improve relations between Kenya and international lending institutions. His appointment may well have been crucial in persuading the IMF to resume lending the government money.

For a while Leakey enjoyed unprecedented popularity as his dream team started a radical overhaul of the country's bloated, corrupt, nepotistic bureaucracy.

But as usual, Leakey ran into trouble. Some complained again about his uncanny ability to make unnecessary enemies. Others said his anti-corruption drive was threatening the interests of too many powerful figures. Leakey stepped down in 2001 - without giving any public explanation.

Leakey said he planned to retire from active political life. He wanted instead to grow grapes on his farm in the Rift Valley.

But in 2015, he returned to public life with current President Uhuru Kenyatta appointing him as chairman of the board of the KWS. He brokered a controversial deal that allowed a Chinese-funded railway line to be built through the Nairobi National Park.

"We cannot say to the people of Kenya: 'Oh the railway can't come through Nairobi Park so you won't have a railway for five years'," he was quoted as saying at the time.

More recently, his focus had moved to what he saw as the biggest environmental threat - climate change.

"We've created a terrible mess," he said.

He feared that Kenya's national parks would one day cease to exist because they "would have dried out or washed out".

"Poaching, I think we can deal with. But habitat loss and human expansion to encroach on water systems and forests and pollute the air - no, I don't see anything being done in Africa," Leakey said.

He died with his dream of building a museum on the edges of Kenya's Rift Valley, to celebrate evolution and the common history from Africa that all humans share, unfulfilled.

"I want to build a cathedral of life, with no God," he said.

"We are one species, we came out of Lake Turkana three million years ago and we have to recognise we're all in the same house," he said.

Having lived in Kenya all his life, Leakey also called for greater investment in Africa to help create jobs, which he said would allow the continent to "leap ahead".

"I'm full of confidence that we have the human resources, Africa has just got to be given a little bit of a lift."

(BBC News)

Catching up ! 'Old Africa' magazines, and some new books !

 

Its months since I mentioned my favourite Africa magazine .... and I have five copies I've not commented on. 

Issue # 94 has  short article about the Carrier Corps in World War I, and it took me a while to realise that the district of Kariokor in the centre of Nairobi .... was named after the Carrier Corps, who had their HQ in that area !   Nowadays there is a Commonwealth cemetery there.

# 95 (June/July 2021)  has a letter in it from yours truly about the visit to Kenya of Prince Charles, in March 1977.   The children from the school mine attended were taken to the airstrip to greet him, and I remember a firm hand-shake and a conversation .... but after all this time, have no idea what we spoke about !

The same magazine has an article about Maeve Leakey, and her recently published book 'The Sediments of Time' ... autobiography and lots about fossil hunting in the region of Lake Rudolf .... sorry, Lake Turkana !   I ordered a copy ...

# 96 (August/September 2021) with a bit about Prince Charles 'blonde bird' who turned out to be a joke .... a stuffed pigeon wearing a blonde wig !   

# 97 (October/November 2021) all you wanted to know about 'killer' bees !  (I shudder at the thought).

# 98 (December/January 2022  an interesting articld about Biashara Street (now know as Bazaar Street)  I loved this street when we went to Nairobi about every three or four months.  Toddlers Bazaar provided us with things like baby seat, cot, push-chair .... and best of all, it has shelves and shelves of secondhand paperback books, which I raided every visit.   I've written to the editor about this amazing shop, and he emails that they might use my letter !  Watch this space !  

Starting 2022 with some sad news

 Richard Leakey: Kenyan conservationist dies aged 77

His groundbreaking work contributed to the recognition of Africa as the birthplace of humankind.

He also spearheaded campaigns to stop poaching in Kenya, famously burning the country's stockpile of poached ivory.

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta said Leakey had "served our country with distinction".

Leakey served in various positions in the Kenyan government including the National Museums of Kenya, the Kenya Wildlife Service and as head of the civil service.

"Besides his distinguished career in public service, Dr Leakey is celebrated for his prominent role in Kenya's civil society where he founded and successfully ran a number of institutions," Mr Kenyatta said.

Leakey followed in his parents' footsteps in paleoanthropology - the practice of seeking to understand human evolution by studying fossils and ancient tools.

In his 20s, Leakey made his own important finds, and in two ground-breaking books (Origins and People of the Lake), he explained the emergence of Homo erectus, an ancestor of modern humans.

His work contributed to the growing body of evidence that the earliest humans had lived on the African continent.

In 1981, he fronted a seven-part BBC television series called "The Making of Mankind", which made him a household name.

In the late 1980s, he switched careers to take over as head of Kenya's Wildlife Service at a time when poachers were wiping out the country's entire elephant and rhino populations.

He told his rangers to shoot poachers on sight and organised the spectacular public burning of a huge haul of ivory.

In 1993, the small plane he was flying in lost power and crashed. He survived but both of his legs were amputated below the knee.

That did not stop him from entering Kenyan politics, setting up a new political party. But his political career did not last and in 1998 he took up a role as head of Kenya's civil service, with a mission to fight official corruption.

He lasted three years in the role before returning to the Kenya Wildlife Service.

At the time of his death, he was serving as chairman of the Turkana Basin Institute at Stony Brook University in the US. The institute works to facilitate research and education in palaeontology and archaeology in northern Kenya.

Kenya's Deputy president said Leakey "inspired many Kenyans with his loyalty to his country. He loved Kenya".

(from the BBC report)

I remember reading that after surgery following his plane crash in which both his legs were smashed beyond repair, that he requested his amputated legs were frozen, so that when he eventually died, his legs could be buried with him !   I believe in his very active life he also had been on kidney dialysis for a long time, until he received a new kidney from his wife, Maeve.  

A remarkable man.