Juliet's Kenya Days blog

Letter from Judy to Nanny & Grandad 3 Mar 1975 –

On Saturday I went to see the refrigerator we are getting in about 10 days. It is a very big one with a large freezing compartment so I am getting a bargain – it is only 500/- ; it belongs to a family going home and they are very glad to be able to keep it until the day before they go, so have been extra generous about the price. As we have to boil our milk and water before we drink it we will be glad to have the fridge – it makes it much more palatable – also I can shop for meat etc just once a week which will be good.

Reminiscence by Juliet –

Our milk was delivered fresh (and often still warm) from the school farm in a churn perched on top of a bicycle rack, held there by the milkman with a dipper and funnel who would feed the milk into our own bottles (recycled squash bottles). Mum would then boil the milk and an inch of cream would gather at the top of the pan. Sometimes Mum made ice-cream from it.

Letter from Graham to Grandma & Grandad 10 Mar 1975 –

Judy made some delicious pineapple jam yesterday. In the garden we have a thriving passion fruit plant which now has many fruit coming along. We can eat the fruit as they are or make juice with them.

Letter from Judy to Dona 17 Mar 1975 –

We are much enjoying all the lovely fruit – large pineapples for 2/- each and bananas for 1/- a dozen, passion fruit, grenadillas, mangoes, not to mention lemons and limes at 2/- a kilo and strawberries for 3 or 4/- for 500g. We also get fillet steak for 13/- a kilo and most meat is at least half the price of that in England. On the other hand other things are much more expensive so the cost of living is roughly the same.

Letter from Judy to Nanny & Grandad 16 May 1975 –

I have made some kei-apple jelly from fruit on our hedge – it is not unlike redcurrant jelly and deep red although the fruit is bright yellow – all the little children have been suffering from ‘kei-apple runs’ from eating raw fruit – although tempting, they have a remarkable laxative effect !

Letter from Graham to Diane 25 May 1975 –

We are enjoying having a fridge and keep it stocked with coke, lager and sometimes Martini or Cinzano which seems cheap at 18/-. Judy has experimented with making ice-cream with varying success using the cream from milk which is straight from the cows on the school farm – an amazing luxury.

Letter from Judy to Sue & Gravel 13 June 1975 –

You can spend astronomical sums on imported English food – I saw a packet of Birdseye Fishfingers for 29/- last week (that’s getting on for £2!!) – I suppose somebody must buy them, and you can get the smallest size of Lockwoods tinned gooseberries for just under 50p if you want to !

Letter from Judy to Jo 13 July 1975 –

We get a lot of people coming round selling things – often vegetables, and sometimes chickens squawking loudly or rabbits. Somehow I never have the heart to buy the latter although I’m sure Hannah would do the dirty work !

Letter from Graham to Grandma & Grandad 14 Aug 1975 –

Judy made some loquat jam which was terribly runny but a nice flavour. We have loads more loquats on our three trees but we are hard up for jam jars. Perhaps they will be nice stewed; they are quite sharp and juicy and in the middle are big pips which have to be removed.

Letter from Judy to Elaine 13 Sept 1975 –

Sometimes I feel nostalgic for all those convenience foods – we get through great quantities of biscuits, cakes, bread etc, all of which I have to make myself – not to mention school packed lunches. I have a big fridge so only go into Nairobi to shop once a week and have got quite used to planning food by the week.

Letter from Judy to Grandma & Grandad 22 Sept 1975 –

Your mention of blackberry and apple pudding did set the family’s lips smacking ! I have made a loquat pudding with cloves and sultanas which is not too far removed from apple but our blackberry bush produced a couple of dozen berries a week – it has been doing this for 4 or 5 months and looks all set to continue for another 4, but there are never enough to make a decent pudding.

Letter from Judy to Grandma & Grandad 31 Oct 1975 –

I have spent the last two days in Nairobi and have enjoyed myself pottering around the shops. There are food shops similar to those in England but of course with much less variety of goods available. All the butcheries are together in an open market – a specially built meat market, with stone-built stalls with big refrigerators at the back. They are not as hygienic as shops at home – meat lies open to the flies and some of the shops are not too careful about cleanliness, but the ones patronised by Europeans try hard and certainly the quality of the meat they sell is excellent. Yesterday I bought the top end of a leg of lamb, 1 kilo of fillet beef and about 12oz calves liver for under 20 shillings. At the moment there are 16.5/- to every £sterling, so with a chicken for 17/- and some fresh tilapia fish fillets (rather similar to plaice but thicker fillets) for 8/- I got my meat for a whole week for 45/- which I don’t complain about ! The meat market also has fish stalls along one side full of exotic and often strong smelling fish, crabs, prawns etc. The fish is not prepared as it is in England nowadays so you choose your fish and the men prepare it for you. The fish lie around all over the market in great iron containers with chunks of very dirty ice scattered around. I’m afraid we haven’t been very adventurous with fish but I’m afraid that it might not be fresh and when it looks so different it’s difficult to tell. We did try some impala (an antelope) but found the flavour rather strong and didn’t enjoy it much – it’s still a treat for us to eat beef as often as we like. We don’t buy much in the way of vegetables at the moment because we grow almost all we need; we still haven’t got used to having our own tomatoes etc nearly all the year round. Graham enjoys his gardening and our beautiful vegetable patch has become a byword in the school. Africans think Europeans unable to look after a garden (because they always have gardeners in Kenya I suppose) and even though we tell them we had a much bigger ‘shamba’ (allotment) at home they think Graham is what they call a ‘fundi’ which means craftsman in Swahili.

Letter from Graham Dec 1975 –

A population explosion locally has made the area rather overcrowded so that there are many people trying to exist on too small plots of land. There is enough to eat, but with little variety and nothing much to spare for selling. Thus the local shops have none of the expensive food items which we like to have. Even the essentials like sugar, eggs, sterilised milk and bread are not always in stock. I don’t know whether this is because the shop keepers are poor and do not manage to buy sufficient stocks or whether the wholesale suppliers are inefficient. We have eaten rather more meat here because it is relatively cheap. Most of our food is the same as in England but the fruit is different. Apples are ridiculously expensive but pineapples, tangerines (green), passion fruit and pawpaw are cheap and seem to be always available.

Letter from Judy to Grandma & Grandad 5 July 1976 –

Our vegetables in the garden are doing well and we have already had several pickings of green beans and are looking forward to peas, lettuce and new potatoes soon. It’s a pity we can’t send a few potatoes home with the girls – I’ve just bought 10 kilos (about 25lbs) for 10/- to tide us over until ours are ready. We get two crops a year so don’t have to buy them very often.

Letter from Judy to John, Jo, Robert, Nicky & Kerry 15 Dec 1976 –

As usual we will be in a Game Park so Christmas catering will be easy for me – tinned corned beef or tinned pilchard – no fresh food keeps in that kind of heat for more than a day or so and tinned goods are extremely limited in variety unless one wants to pay several pounds for a tin of imported ravioli that would serve two at a pinch ! However this time I’m going to experiment with baking bread in a biscuit box oven in the embers so we might be able to have bread which will be a great help.

Letter from Graham to Grandma & Grandad 3 Apr 1977 –

We have been eating gorgeous pineapples, mangos and pawpaws. They are wonderful but you would really laugh to see our children go into raptures because Judy gets in some small apples. In fact, the apples grown here are delicious – not like the bigger but rather tasteless ones which are often sold in England. We only get them occasionally – it seems to be a short season and they are expensive.