I was running errands with my youngest daughter, when I saw this car in Lavington Mall in Nairobi. It still has the Obama 08 bumper sticker, the year she was born!

In 1898 the EASM purchased 44 acres of land for a mission station from Munyua, the son of the late Waiyaki wa Hinga. The land was “ … beyond Dagoretti, some two miles from Fort Smith and on a parallel with the proposed Kikuyu railway station.” My uncle was named after Munyua, his grandfather. (4/4)

The second appendix is Mahoya ma Waiyaki (The Prayers of Waiyaki). Written in Kikuyu by Mbugua Njama and published by Mbugua Book Writers in Nairobi in 1952). Translated into English in November 1968 by James Ngugi (Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o) of the Department of English, University College, Nairobi. (3/4)

The first is the first hand account, by HH Austin, of the attack by Waiyaki on Purkiss of the IBEA Co in August 1892. Waiyaki died enroute to Mombasa thereafter. He was buried in Kibwezi near the East Africa Scottish Mission (EASM) station. (2/4)

During the Easter weekend it was a joy to visit my uncle Munyua (married to my mother's sister) - the great grandson of Waiyaki wa Hinga. I later sent my uncle two appendixes of Brian McIntosh's 1969 Edinburgh University PhD thesis - The Scottish Mission in Kenya 1891-1923. (1/4)

John Spencer, in 1985, ended his book with a bold conclusion. "Without KAU, one can not understand the modern history of Kenya."
He also made the observation that "... KANU, like KAU, was and is rooted in conservatism."
I have enjoyed reading KAU, I have a better understanding of Kenyan politics.

Kambui mission station, established by Gospel Missionary Society in 1902. Missionaries started a school whose alumni include Wanyoike Kamawe (1902-1910), Harry Thuku (1907-1911), Waruhiu Kung’u (1902-1905), Magugu Waweru (1917-1919) and Mugo Gatheru (1941-1944) 3rd Kenyan university student in USA.

Read the new review by Kenneth King of “#NormanLeys and #SettlerColonialism in #Kenya” (@merlinpress.bsky.social) by Colin Leys:

cup.org/40U2lBt

'Hacienda El Progreso' by Café Las Flores. Arabica coffee from Nicaragua.

CAF's decision was so absurd that it went unnoticed that they released it at 22:49 Cairo time (20:49 UK, 21:49 Morocco). (Which is something they usually do btw, you would think their HQ is in Miami). Burying the absurd in the absurd.

RAF have a 2023 paper on their own 1950s bombing campaign in Kenya

I'm not sure many Kenyans would agree on the specific findings and conclusions, about the success of bombing people into submission, which is actually my point

www.raf.mod.uk/what-we-do/c...

The Docteur Is In | David Beal In January 1960 Brussels hosted a “Round Table” conference of Congolese and European leaders to negotiate the future of the Belgian Congo. Anticolonial

David Beal on Docteur Nico, the pioneering guitarist of Congolese rumba https://go.nybooks.com/4s6OsvO

In the following days and weeks 11 more students reported to the pioneer secondary school for Africans in Kenya. The last was Magugu Waweru who joined the school in the second term on July 22, 1926. (2/2)

"On 1 March 1926, the Alliance High School, Kikuyu, opened quietly without pomp or ceremony." On hand to receive the first 16 students that day, were George Grieve, the Acting Principal, his wife Annie and Solomon Kinuthia, the carpenter. The History of the Alliance High School J Stephen Smith (1/2)

Thuku was named after his maternal grandfather. Who was originally called Karanja, but took the name Thuku - short for ruthuku. The name for the brass wire that the Arabs sold to the Agikuyu in exchange for elephant tusks. (2/2)

Harry Thuku features extensively in chapter 2 of John Spencer's KAU. That led me to 'Harry Thuku - An Autobiography' done with the assistance of Kenneth King in 1970. Fascinated by his time and education at the Gospel Missionary Society in Kambui, with Wanyoike Kamawe, from 1907 - 1911. (1/2)

Now reading 'The Kenyan African Union' by John Spencer

Event flyer with book abstract and speaker bios

Cover of the book

Please join the Northeast Africa Forum on 17 Feb for a book launch & discussion of:
'Peasants to Paupers: Land, Class and Kinship in Central Kenya'
with author Peter Lockwood (Göttingen)
& David Anderson (Warwick)
*Hybrid event* Full details & webinar registration:
talks.ox.ac.uk/talks/id/b8f...

It is of interest! Thank you!

Hempstone's compromise was to provide a list of excellent books about Africa at the end of his book - "... those to which I owe most ... ".
In the coming weeks, I need to figure out whether to footnote or not to footnote in the book I am writing! (5/5)

" ... I didn't want to relegate that background to footnotes and endnotes (I hate footnotes and endnotes.)" Obama in the preface of his book 'A Promised Land' (2020) (4/5)

"This book has not been footnoted because it is not a document of record but a means of communication and footnoting, I feel, destroys the flow of a narrative."
Smith Hempstone in the introduction of his book 'Africa Angry Young Giant'. Written in Timau, Kenya in March 1960. (3/5)

To my surprise, I am learning that there is a strong argument against footnotes. Alarmingly this argument is made by good writers like Barack Obama and the late Smith Hempstone (journalist and later US Ambassador to Kenya). (2/5)

My assumption as I write, has been that a 'serious' book should have footnotes or endnotes. To cite sources and provide additional information. I thought I must include footnotes, because they have been an invaluable source of additional information in my research process. (1/5)

When Yoweri Museveni seized power in Uganda in 1986, he said:

"the problem of Africa in general and Uganda in particular is not the people but leaders who want to overstay in power."

The 81-year-old president and former rebel is seeking a seventh term in office on Thursday.

Great to be back for more #ShortBeachBirds. The usual herons, terns & Crab-plovers but also v out-of-season Mangrove Kingfisher calling from across the creek + a Sooty Gull is not common yo see. #birds #birding #Watamu

Four fascinating maps of Africa in 1912 by a Christian missionary organization based in the United States of America.
The vastness is fairly accurate, so to is the population at 150 million. A Negro race in West Africa? 🤔 The railway, cable telegram and telephone seems overly optimistic.

Somalia's Siad Barre: Kenyan pilot tells BBC of his secret mission to fly his body from Nigeria An ex-air force pilot explains how he carried out an undercover mission to fly Siad Barre's body home for burial.

Somalia's Siad Barre: Kenyan pilot tells BBC of his secret mission to fly his body from Nigeria

"The historian never arrives at certainty; he rarely ends with more than a not altogether sifted totality of plausible, hypothetical, guessed at and imagined formulations of what had been." P Weiss
Footnote 2 on page 9 of Godfrey Muriuki's brilliant 1969 PhD Thesis 'A History of the Kikuyu to 1904'.

The rise and fall of Nicolás Maduro The rise of Venezuela's deposed president, Nicolás Maduro, was slow, beginning in youth politics and shaped by the mentorship of Hugo Chávez. His fall, too, unfolded over years.

The rise of Venezuela's deposed president, Nicolás Maduro, was slow, beginning in youth politics and shaped by the mentorship of Hugo Chávez. His fall, too, unfolded over years. n.pr/4bfdcfB