Juliet's Kenya Days blog

Letter from Juliet to Grandma & Grandad 5 Aug 1975 –

We’ve had 3 adventures since I last wrote. We went to the Railway Museum in Nairobi and to a museum at the main gate of Nairobi National Park. They were both really good, but our BIG adventure was our holiday to Mombasa with Martin & Caroline Trent and their friend Patrick Wallace from England. We left early in the morning on 26th July. It was a very long drive on a straight boring road, but we saw Kilimanjaro looming out of the clouds and also saw a few elephants. We were lucky it wasn’t very hot otherwise we would have got tired and sticky and no doubt grumpy (our minibus had no air con).

Letter from Judy to Nanny & Grandad 8 Aug 1975 –

We found the 330 miles a long drive to do in one day although the road to Mombasa is excellent and virtually trafficless. It is an amazing journey; the bulk of it through semi-desert and nothing that could be called a town the whole way. There were plenty of people around though it’s difficult to see how they live – the land seems terribly overgrazed with nothing but bare earth and thorn bushes for miles and miles. Even though it must be the most important and heavily used road in East Africa petrol stations and cafes are very few and far between. The countryside near Mombasa we found very pleasant, green and hilly, and when we reached the sea it was a brilliant blue. We had to take the ferry from Mombasa Island south to the mainland where the school cottage is. This ferry takes all the traffic on the main road south from Mombasa to Tanzania and it is a tiny little ferry taking perhaps a dozen vehicles at a time – we crossed several times – twice during ‘rush hour’ and never waited more than a few minutes ! Amani Cottage (owned by Alliance) was a great success; it is literally a few yards from the sands and surrounded by big palm trees and green grass. The children loved it of course and spent all their time on the beach, hunting for shells which were everywhere. There was a short, steep, sandy slope, then a flattish area of rock, sandy pools and channels which stretched out about quarter of a mile to the reef which was a line of white breakers as far as one could see either way. The reef gave out an amazingly loud deep roar which was with us day and night. I thought that the sound of wind rushing through the palm trees might keep us awake but it didn’t. Juliet and Graham went out to the reef at low tide and collected some beautiful shells and saw all kinds of sea creatures. Unfortunately I left my plimsolls behind so had to be content with the nearer rock pools – it is dangerous to walk further out barefoot because of the sea urchins which leave their spines behind in your feet. One day we walked round the Old Town at Mombasa and enjoyed seeing all the Indian shops and markets – it was difficult to remember we were in Africa – most of the local people seemed to have a large proportion of Arab blood in them.

Letter from Juliet to Grandma & Grandad 5 Aug 1975 –

In the morning I woke at 6am sneezing so instead of waking everyone up I got dressed and went outside. The tide was just going out and there were lots of little crabs running all over the place digging holes to live in. We spent this day and the next lounging around on the beach and collecting cowries (I have over 200 of them). We had a trip into Mombasa and walked through the Old Town to Fort Jesus – we didn’t go inside though. The Old Town had lots of tall terraced houses in very narrow roads. The windows were small and dirty with dirty ragged curtains. It was horrible to think of people actually living in these places – aren’t we lucky to live in such nice houses with gardens? There were lots of fleabitten cats scavenging around in rubbish piles and Fiona wanted to go and stroke them but Mummy said better not. Helen and I went snorkelling in deep sandy pools when the tide was out (we borrowed Martin’s things). Daddy and I were going to walk all the way out to the reef but didn’t quite get there because the water was getting rather deep and also there was a very strong cold wind and rain blowing. On the way out we saw lots of lovely starfish – they were grey with striking red or green patterns on them – obviously used to warn enemies off. We also saw lots of little fish, crabs, live shellfish, seaweeds and lots of horrid black spiny sea urchins. We found two big shells. On the way home from Mombasa they stank and we had to try to hide the horrible smell.

Letter from Helen to Robert, Nick and Kerry Aug 1975 –

On our holiday in Mombasa we saw 3 big jellyfish on the beach – they look like plastic bags broken in shreds. We also saw lots of small Portuguese Men O’War. If they are big and sting you they can kill even a full grown man, but they didn’t sting me ! Juliet and Daddy walked out to the reef but they couldn’t go further because behind the reef there are sharks. The reef stops the sharks from coming in.

Letter from Graham to Malcolm & Frances 9 Aug 1975 –

We stayed in a holiday ‘cottage’ with a roof made of palm leaves, right by the sea shore. It was close to Mombasa which has a fascinating ‘old town’ with narrow streets, crowded buildings and people who seem to be various mixtures of Africans, Arabs and Indians. They have a reputation of being very friendly, and it is true as far as I know. When I was there in March collecting my van a young man offered to change money for me (there is a black market for sterling) then he offered to sell me hash or cocaine or to find me ‘nice Indian girls’. I thought this was very friendly of him but of course I was too busy!

Letter from Helen to Grandma & Grandad Aug 1975 –

One day after we ended school we went to Mombasa. There is a school cottage there for us, it is called Amani Cottage the sea is very close, you only have to walk down a little bit of grass and then the sand begins. We found a lot of cowrie shells (mostly little ones) Juliet and Daddy (when the tide was out) went out to the reef and brought back some lovely big shells. Behind the reef there are sharks and if the reef wasn’t there people would not be able to swim. At Mombasa we brought three hats for us. I had an orange hat which goes with the orange ribbon, Juliet’s blue hat goes with the blue ribbon and Fiona’s pink hat goes with the pink ribbon so you got the right colour ribbons.

Letter from Judy to Nanny & Grandad 8 Aug 1975 –

We spent the last 3 days of our holiday at Amboseli National Park which is a lake in an area of very bleak semi-desert – much of the lake is dried up but there is a strip of very lush swamp and water which is much inhabited by animals and Maasai who come into the park in great numbers when the drought gets bad. Once again heavy cloud spoilt our view of Kilimanjaro and depressed everyone’s spirits a little but we certainly saw lots of animals including thousands of gnus and zebra – I should imagine the park is on the path of their seasonal migration. Our bandas were beside one of the waterholes with nothing to separate us from the animals but a row of white stones. The nights were quite noisy with animals roaming all around the bandas – the gnus knocked over the dustbin so often that we had to put it inside. In the morning the children went outside to see what ‘visitors’ we had during the night and usually found elephant and cat prints as well as the ubiquitous gnus and zebras. There were vervet monkeys living in the trees who seemed to spend the whole day watching for one of us to leave a door open, but their total haul for our stay was only one orange so we didn’t do badly. We had some lovely birds around, including half a dozen or so beautiful birds called Superb Starlings which were azure blue with a bright chestnut throat with a white band below the chestnut, also a related species which were more purple around the head and green on the wings, which were very tame and happily hopped around under the table while we were eating. We had a grey woodpecker busily digging a hole in a nearby tree and also saw a pied kingfisher fishing.

Postcards from Juliet’s collection.

Letter from Juliet to Grandma & Grandad 5 Aug 1975 –

The bandas were quite small and we had three between us; Caroline, Martin and Patrick had one, Mummy and Daddy had another and us three were in the last. There were separate kitchen huts with a wood-burning cooking range and a sink. On the first night I was disturbed from my sleep by a hoo-hooing noise and a galloping noise – it was gnus, or wildebeeste, in a herd galloping by. There were also a few elephants thumping around. Daddy took us out looking for animals but we didn’t find much except for gnus, gnus, gnus and zebras, zebras, zebras. Back at the bandas I saw a giraffe very close and a woodpecker pecking in a rotten branch – he kept at it furiously for all our three nights in the bandas. Although Amboseli is at the foot of Kilimanjaro we couldn’t see it because it was too cloudy except for on the last night when we just saw the top covered in snow. We went out lots of times but it wasn’t until our last day that we saw any cats. During the morning we took out a Ranger, who had been out all night, hoping that he would show us some cats but he said don’t be too disappointed if we don’t see any because they are all moving at the moment. We didn’t see any then, but later that afternoon we went back to the place the Ranger said he saw some lions hunting and we saw a pride. There was a lovely golden-maned lion dozing around and two lionesses with two year old cubs and a cheeky cub of one year. They were all quite undisturbed when we drove near them. When one of the lionesses went away to go to the toilet the young cub immediately got up and patted her on the bottom. She turned around and gave him/her a clout on the ear. There weren’t as many elephants here as we saw in Tsavo but we saw quite a lot of herds.