Juliet's Kenya Days blog

Letter from Judy to Nanny & Grandad Feb 21 1975 –

We will ask Nationwide to send our Pass Book and the cheque to you. We are reluctant to have the Pass Book sent back and forward by airmail more than is necessary so perhaps you could keep it for the time being. We are almost sure you can pay the cheque from Nationwide into Giro by going to the Post Office and filling in a form they will give you. If it is impossible to do it this way you will have to send out a transfer/deposit form from Giro for us to sign which we will return to you and you can then send it off to the Giro Centre in a Giro envelope. I feel we have been most disorganised about our financial affairs but it seems inevitable when one first goes abroad – everyone reports the same problems. I hope you will be able to bear with us. At the moment Kenya and the UK must be making a mint out of our postage ! The trouble is one is so used to getting things sorted with a quick telephone call which we now don’t have !

Letter from Judy to Nanny & Grandad 3 Mar 1975 –

We have arranged to transfer quite a lot of money out here – we have to pay school fees out here once a term (getting on for 3000/-) and they are refunded in England in Sterling, not to mention all our other expenses. At the moment people returning from Kenya at the end of their contracts are not being allowed to take any money back with them so they are very jealous of our position with the school fees ! I don’t think we are going to have much difficulty using up the Kenyan part of our salary ! But it is hard on people who get all their salary in Kenyan Shillings. Life is fraught with difficulties but in spite of our financial muddles we are enjoying ourselves tremendously – don’t let it spoil your pleasure in life ! We have plenty of cash now and know we can always ask you to put money into our account if needed so are not worried. Our new bank account here is opening but not functioning properly – I am going to grapple with them this morning.

Letter from Graham to Grandma & Grandad 10 Mar 1975 –

Tomorrow I have my ‘half-day’ which means I will finish teaching at 10:30am and may then spend the rest of the day as I wish. In practice this means I go into Nairobi with Judy and Fiona for shopping, visiting the library and any other errands. I have to visit the Ministry of Education because I have not had any pay yet. This is normal apparently in Kenya and in the past Kenyan teachers have resigned in quite large numbers because of not receiving their pay. Luckily I get paid by Britain as well so I won’t go short.

Letter from Judy to Nanny & Grandad 26 Mar 1975 –

We have withdrawn £300 from Giro which we did by exchanging cheques with someone going home to the UK. Also we paid for a chest of drawers, a carpet and fridge the same way. Strictly illegal no doubt, but very useful in our circumstances ! We have also received notification that our education allowance of £1041 for the January term has been forwarded to our bank account plus £35 for Feb’s pay from ODA (Overseas Development Agency). At the moment ODA are deducting £50 to pay off the car purchase loan we had from them which is why it’s such a small amount. We have sent a cheque to Eastern Liners for £46.76 for the shipping.

Letter from Judy to Nanny & Grandad 18 April 1975 –

Petrol is still only 10/- a litre here but distances are so great that it is quite an expense. The cost of living is about the same as England with the exception of our house overheads which are minimal – our rent is only 180/- a month.

Letter from Graham to Diane 25 May 1975 –

Inflation is a problem in Kenya but I doubt if it’s as serious as in Britain, except for those who earn low wages. At present a domestic servant gets about 15/- a day; enough to buy two large packets of cornflakes. Of course it buys a lot more in the way of local fresh produce but that is a small wage nevertheless. I used to think people would work harder if there was high unemployment but now I’m not so sure. It seems that people work slowly here to make the job last. My gardener does but I have decided to only employ him for 2 days a week in future. I would rather give him better pay for two days than see him wasting his time and getting bored on five days.

Letter from Graham to the Aunties 8 Oct 1975 –

I am glad I had our minibus shipped to Kenya because cars are so expensive here. Petrol is (much?) cheaper however; being about 66p per gallon.

Letter from Judy to Nanny & Grandad 13 Jan 1976 –

We have bought a season ticket for all the National Parks which is quite a bargain – 400/- for all of us for the year – whereas it would cost us 80/- every time we went otherwise.

Letter from Judy to Nanny & Grandad 15 Apr 1976 –

Thank you very much for your long newsy letter and for dealing with the Nationwide cheque. We received the cheque covering our shipping costs at the end of March, after both Graham and the headmaster had done a certain amount of stirring – after all it’s only 15 months after we originally paid the sum involved to Pickfords ! Graham also received some of his Kenyan back pay due from April 1975 so altogether March was a good month! The trouble is the civil service are hopelessly behindhand with the salary paperwork and never quite catch up with the most recent increment or pay rise which there probably isn’t enough money to cover anyway.

Letter from Judy to Caroline & Martin 6 May 1976 –

Shortly after you left we received a bulky newsletter from the High Commission including many details about what to do and who to go to when coming to the end of one’s contract; details about arrangements (new) for flights home and exactly what everyone’s entitled to, also many points about various matters involving people out here – medical expenses etc, details of the new agreement between Kenya and Britain and the rundown of the OSAS people from 700 now to 400 in 1979, saying, I quote “In the relatively short time that I have headed this Dept. of the High Commission I have gained the impression that contracts between the Dept and British supplemented personnel are not as close as they might be….(various details of who the commission staff are and what work they do)…..I should welcome any comments any of you may have on the service we provide and suggestions – reasonable ones please ! – for improvements”. Of course we have no means of knowing whether M’s letter has any bearing on any of this, but as far as I know we have received no other document of this nature from the Commission previously. At the same time we received the details of the new OSAS pay scales (backdated to 1.11.75) which you no doubt had copies of too – as they put Graham’s pay up to over £300 p.month in the UK we’re not complaining !

Letter from Graham to David 12 May 1976 –

We had a pay rise in Britain recently so that apart from my Kenyan income I now have over £3600 per annum, tax free, in Britain. Of course we are out of touch with the cost of living, so perhaps this money is not as much as I think in real terms. Cars seems to have jumped up in price enormously for example. A standard price for LPs here is equivalent to about £3.60 – I bet that’s higher than in the UK.

Letter from Judy to Grandma & Grandad 27 July 1976 –

We will be sending you a cheque via Juliet to help towards the cost of feeding and entertaining the children while they are with you – I know how expensive they can be. Please don’t make us unhappy by refusing it. I don’t suppose Graham has mentioned it but his salary in Britain is over £300 per month (tax free) and in addition he has his Kenyan salary and the rent from our house in Bristol, so we have managed to save a lot of money. When I think of the struggle you and Dad and my parents had bringing up a family in the war and in the post-war years I realise how very lucky we are. We have tried to bring the children up to appreciate the value of money and not to have everything come to them too easily – one of the results is that big events like this holiday with you is a real high spot of their lives! They are filled with awe at the thought of us spending all that money on them !

Letter from Graham 3 Mar 1977 –

Dear Mr Wangai, I have sent a letter to the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education regarding some money owing to me, and I enclose a copy for your information. I wonder if the Ministry is really so badly organised as it seems or whether the employees sometimes wish to deliberately be awkward with British teachers. My letters of March and September 1976 referring to this money owing to me were placed in my Ministry file without action taken. I am not willing to pay Shs 300 for Ndanbuki’s school fees until the Ministry pays me the money due, which is more than Shs1000.

Letter from Judy to Nanny & Grandad 28 Mar 1977 –

We expect to spend about a fortnight down at the coast – we usually have to come back because we’ve run out of money and no doubt the same thing will happen again ! Unlike the UK, we can’t draw cash from the bank without a great fuss and palaver except at our own branch in Nairobi. Still, we have taken a certain amount in Traveller’s Cheques which we should be able to change alright.