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HABARI 2017 Newsletter of the Friends of East Africa Nuusbrief van die Oos-Afrika Vriendekomitee The Queen Mother on her 1959 state visit to Kenya and Uganda receiving bouquets of flowers from an Asian, an African and a settler child in Eldoret. (Photo: East African Annual 1959-1960) Inside / Binne 2 General info 3 Moving Heaven and Earth – and the Equator (Elsie Cloete) 7 Ds. M.P. Loubser, merkwaardige Godsman (Magriet Doorewaard) 8 Four old Highlanders (Dan Steyn) 9 Oorlede / Deceased & Teruggestuur / RTS 19 Afrikaner contribution to Kenya Rugby (Paul Okong'o) 15 East Africa Women’s League Tapestry Panels (Elsie Cloete) 21 A request for pictorial material (Dan Steyn) 22 Stellenbosch vs Kakamega (Dan Steyn) 23 John Kagagi letter from New Zealand re Kenya Rugby 24 Kameelperde in koringlande (Christian Schlotfeldt) 27 Swahili Museum, New Kenya Railway, Kuki Gallmann 28 Kitale School Reunion 2016 29 The East African Safari Rally 1953-1963 (compiled by Elsie Cloete) 31 Foto: Kenia Saamtrek 2016, Pretoria (Krige van Heerden) 32 Map shared by Dave Lichtenstein HABARI 2017 Newsletter of the Friends of East Africa Nuusbrief van die Vriende van Oos-Afrika 2 East-Africa Get-together Saturday 7 October 2017 at the shelter at the picnic site of the Voortrekker Monument See you there! Oos-Afrika Saamtrek Saterdag 7 Oktober 2016 Voortrekkermonument se saal by die ontspanningsterrein Ons sien mekaar daar! Please send your e-mail address if you prefer to get the Habari in electronic format. EDITOR’S LETTER / REDAKTEURSBRIEF East Africa Friends Committee Oos-Afrika Vriendekomitee Thank you very much to everyone who sent articles, photographs and information for this year’s Habari. Danie Steyn (Chairman/ Voorsitter) 012 664 5349 Baie dankie aan elkeen wat bygedra het tot die ar- Posbus 17074, Lyttelton, 0140. tikels, foto’s en informasie in hierdie uitgawe van die Mobile: 083 2716 378 Habari. [email protected] [email protected] Rugby has turned out to be one of the strong themes this year – and it is also being researched Eddie de Waal (Editor/ by Kenyans today. See Paul Okong’o’s article on Redakteur, HABARI) 628 Page 16 and John Kagagi’s request on Page 23. Keerom Street, DASPOORT Please note that Dan Steyn is compiling a Kenya 0082 scrapbook for publication – read about it on Page 20 Cell: 0766049177 e-mail: [email protected] and find out how you can contribute to it. Dan is doing a great job, and you can be a part of it. Krige van Heerden - Editor Pieter Pieterse Dorie Boshoff Elsie Cloete ANNUAL GET-TOGETHER Janssen Davies Jan Boshoff Our annual get-together is scheduled for Saturday Piet Prinsloo 7th October. Isabel Prinsloo Venue: The shelter at the picnic site at the Voortrek- Rina Helberg ker Monument. Entrance fee: The last entry fee we received, was PLEASE send us your e-mail address that it would be R40.00 per person. The cost of postage is going up ... and our postal service is going down. To counter this, Donations are always welcome and helpful. U kan we have started issuing the Habari via e-mail. It works well – it is fast, you can see all the in die volgende rekening deponeer: Oos-Afrika colour there actually is, you can enlarge it on Vriendekomitee / Friends of East Africa Committee the PC screen, and you can share it easily. Acc no/Rek no 080602405 Absa Hercules. Die kode vir alle Absa takke is dieselfde. 632 005 is the Please send your address to code for all Absa branches. Rina Helberg at [email protected] HABARI 2017 Newsletter of the Friends of East Africa Nuusbrief van die Vriende van Oos-Afrika 3 Moving Heaven and Earth gloved hand wav- – and the Equator ing. The weary children trooped Elsie Cloete back to school dis- appointed and dis- (Sources from the East Africa An- gruntled. nual 1959-1960 and with thanks to Estelle Bieri, Dan Steyn and Fanie Organisers of any & Sorette Kruger. The photos of royal visit will tell the Kruger family meeting the you that heaven Queen Mother are sourced from a and earth have to privately published book by Sor- be moved to en- ette Kruger, wife of Fanie Kruger, sure everything Die Kenya-konneksie: Die Storie van die Krugers en die Steyns, proceeds accord- 2011.) ing to established protocol and plan. uring February 1959 Sometimes, one D Queen Elizabeth, the has to move the The Queen Mother greeting settlers at Equator Queen Mother, undertook a Equator as well. Station. The sign is about 25 metres from the state visit to Kenya and Peter Lavers, small station building. Technically, the equato- rial line transects the station building and not Uganda. Kenya itself was still headmaster at St the sign. (Photo: East Africa Annual 1959-1960) under a declaration of a State Andrews, later told the children about of Emergency as a result of the from the southern hemisphere the Queen Mother’s stop at Mau Mau but the royal visit into the northern hemisphere was considered an essential within her suite. But there were The committee had aspect to mending fences be- technical difficulties in that tween the diverse communities planned that the Queen such an exact alignment would in the country. In Kampala she Mother should step over prevent the engineers from tak- would officially open Makerere the Equator, from the ing on much-needed water at University. Her visit coincided southern hemisphere the station’s water stop. Never with the Western Kenya Agri- into the northern hemi- daunted, the East African Rail- cultural Show at Eldoret and sphere, within her rail- ways & Harbours Corporation she journeyed by train from way carriage suite. re-erected the rather elaborate Nakuru to spend a few days on sign in order to accommodate the Uasin Gishu Plateau before both the royal visitor and the the nearby Equator Station – continuing with her journey. engineers. It remains in the the highest railway station in same spot to this day – looking The specially refurbished the Commonwealth at 8716 very much the worse for wear, steam train made a number of feet (2657 metres). As the some 25 metres off centre! whistle-stops along the line at name signifies, the tiny sta- small, country stations or wher- tion straddles the Equator. On the Plateau the Queen ever the train passed through a Here, the Queen Mother dis- Mother visited Rensburgrus, farm. Estelle Bieri (neé Cloete) embarked to meet settlers. the farm originally taken up in remembers that pupils at St The organising committee for 1908 by Commandant Jansen Andrews School at Turi were the royal visit had planned van Rensburg – leader of the each given a small flag and that the windows of the car- first Afrikaner trek to the Pla- walked to Turi station in their riage the Queen Mother was teau. The previous night, the Sunday best to wait for hours travelling in should align per- Queen Mother had spent the and hours for the royal train to fectly with the newly built night in her carriage, parked at arrive. In the end, the train Equator Station sign and that Soy Station. From there it was steamed past at speed and no she should be able to step just a short ride to Rensbur- one saw a thing, let alone a HABARI 2017 Newsletter of the Friends of East Africa Nuusbrief van die Vriende van Oos-Afrika 4 Afrikaners in high esteem: “A lot of them were very basic, Mum says. “They weren’t educated and they didn’t read anything except the Bible. But they were tough and re- sourceful and they could live off noth- ing, those people.” And then she sniffs and I can tell it wounds her to make the next admission. “Well, that was most of them. But some of them were quite posh. One Afrikaner family was so posh that the Queen Mother stayed with them when she came to Kenya in 1959.” Mum pauses to let me absorb this startling knowledge. “Imagine that,” she says. “There’s no way our shoddy little house would have been fit for Fanie Kruger’s invitation to tea and royalty, but there they were – those coffee at his grandmother’s home. posh Afrikaners – entertaining the Queen Mother!” grus. The farm previously be- making a very significant con- (from Alexander Fuller’s Cocktail Hour longed to Jansen van Rens- tribution to the economy of under the Tree of Forgetfulness, Simon & burg’s grandson, SP Kruger Kenya and had served as Schuster, 2011. Nicola Fuller, who went OBE, a member of the colony’s members of the King’s Afri- to the convent, may well be remembered Legislative Council and instru- can Rifles during World War II for her successes in show jumping, racing mental in arranging for Plateau and as members of the and bending poles. In an arrangement with Flip Prinsloo, she rode his horse, farmers serving in the Kings Kenya Regiment during Mau Violet, at these meets.) African Rifles in north Africa, to Mau). Alexander Fuller, in a return and produce food for the memoir of her mother, Nicola There was show jumping to be Allied forces in Africa.(SP Huntingford, who spent her watched, livestock to be Kruger died in 1956, his widow, childhood in Eldoret, records viewed and a re-creation of a Joey, then owned the farm.) that Nicola did not hold most wagon train commemorating The Queen Mother had Photo below: Japie (JC) Kruger, his mother, Joey, the Queen Mother and Nan tea with the Krugers. (SPE) Kruger at Rensburgrus. Every member of the family, including children and grandchildren, re- ceived an invitation.