by Shel Arensen 

1909 Charles Hughes spent his honeymoon in Kenya as the writer and secretary for the great African Balloonograph Expedition. His bride Anna didn’t join him. She spent their honeymoon with her mother in Europe. The couple’s strange start to married life is entwined with the African Balloonograph Expedition of 1909.

Adapted from a 1955 East African Standard newspaper article written by John Cherry. The article also appeared in Awaaz magazine and was submitted to Old Africa by Alif Din’s son Ehsan H. Malik from Nairobi.

1912 “I need a volunteer to inspect the new road from Kibigori Station to Eldora River,” announced J. T. Gosling, then Kenya’s Postmaster-General.  Alif Din volunteered for the trip, which would take him from Nairobi to present day Eldoret.

Told by Jill Simpson

1946 We rounded a curve on the wet road, chains spitting mud into the air, and found a big fancy car stuck in a mud hole.

told by Dominik Kamonde Kitonyi

1906 The Italian adventurer, Luigi Amedeo di Savoy, Duke of Abruzzi, spearheaded an expedition to explore, map and photograph the mysterious Ruwenzori Mountains in the heart of Africa. No stranger to harsh conditions, Luigi Amedeo began his life in a palace. At Luigi’s birth in 1873, his father, Amedeo, was the first Duke of Aosta and had reigned as the King of Spain since 1870. But a few weeks after Luigi’s birth in 1873, Amedeo abdicated his throne and returned to his native Italy. At six years of age, Luigi was assigned to the Italian Navy.

by Henry Wright

1886 Maasai warriors, armed with long heavy spears and terrible clubs, met Methodist missionaries, John and Annie Houghton, just outside the stockade of their mission station at Golbanti on the Tana River. A second group of Maasai joined the first on the open road and surrounded the Houghtons.

Ethiopia Through Russian Eyes; Country in Transition 1896–1898 by Alexander Bulatovich, translated & edited by Richard Seltzer (Red Sea Press, 2000).

Reviewed by Cynthia Salvadori

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