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Despite Kisumu being the hotbed of political riots and social agitation for ‘haki yetu’, have you noticed schools have not been torched in that part of the world?
Have you also noted that National schools, at least in Nairobi, have been spared whatever burning issues students are agitating about?
Consider the late Minister for Education, Dr Taitta Towett, Alliance High School Class of 1944. Towett, the only Cabinet Minister who publicly took snuff (by the nose), almost caused a kerfuffle at Alliance after the introductions of trousers.
Towett, who studied moles, preferred sticking to short trousers and akala sandals. Never mind before joining Alliance from Kabianga Mission School, the man who sported Kanu-era neck ties and perennially had his glasses perched on his furrowed forehead, was Kenya’s top student at the time, Duncan Ndegwa notes in Walking in Kenyatta Struggles: My Story published in 2009, recalling too that Charles Njonjo rode white horses over the weekends and being dropped in his father’s car. In 1940s Kenya, no less!
Mzee Jomo Kenyatta was never the brightest of students when he enrolled at Thogoto Mission School.
His biographer, Jeremy Murray-Brown tells us in Kenyatta his effort of 1973, that his teacher, John William Arthur, relegated him to carpentry since masonry was for brighter students. This explains Kenyatta’s famous photo holding a hand plane.
Did you know that boys at the Lenana School were once boarders at Government House (State House) before their dorms were completed? That was when Philip Mitchell, the man who spearheaded the school’s formation, was governor of Kenya in eight years to 1952. The all white boys were driven from State House to Cassandra Crossing at the school gate.
Boys from Nairobi School, on the other hand, were transferred to Lake Naivasha Country Club which was turned into a school when Nairobi School became a temporary hospital during World War II.
They never razed down Lake Naivasha Country Club though, where boarders stayed for fear that Italians would have bombed Nairobi School-which was to named Kabete Boys Secondary, but the headmaster felt it was too clumsy and went for Prince of Wales School.
The old name of Wales is Cambria and hence the Old Cambrian Society for Old Boys!
Did you know Lake Naivasha Country Club — then known as Sparks Hotel — was once the biggest airport hotel in the Kenya colony?
Well, Imperial Airways of Britain landed their flying boat planes on Lake Naivasha when it opened a route to Cape Town via Naivasha in 1932.
Back then, the preferred mode of air transport were flying boats and those nursing jet lag enjoyed their overnight stays at Lake Naivasha-which became Nairobi School until after World War II in 1945.
Did you also know that Nairobi School was fashioned after Winchester Public School where Sir Edward Grigg, another Governor of Kenya (1925-1930), was alumnus, complete with uniform and discipline based on the Naval system?
And that the wooden classrooms at Nairobi School were a response to high enrollment, but that there was a shortage of cement in 1938 Kenya and hence the use of mbao!
