#RIPJosephKamaru: The curtain falls on the life of legendary Gîkûyû benga musician Joseph Kamaru, following a long illness. This is the man whose debut 1969 hit track, Darling ya Mwarîmû (teacher’s darling), caused a storm in parliament and in the national teachers’ union, who threatened to go on strike.

It took Mzee Kenyatta’s intercession to put the storm to rest.

#HistoryKeThread: Seen here conferring with then President Moi, Mr. Burudi Nabwera is a former diplomat, MP, Asst. Minister and later not only Secretary General of KANU in its heydays, but also a Minister for State. Last year, the alumnus of Makerere University released his biography, ‘How It Happened’, a book that should be a good read for anyone interested in the politics of Kenya during the single-party era.

#HistoryKeThread An American’s Observation Of Life Among The Agîkûyû

——- Published in San Francisco, United States, Western Field was an American west coast monthly sports hunter magazine.

The magazine featured stories about the hunting exploits of various American hunters both at home and overseas.

#HistoryKeThread: The Wadavida (Taita) Of Yore

In 1890, author Thomas Stevens authored the book, Scouting for Stanley. The book is an account of the time Thomas spent in East Africa, where he had been sent to join in the search for legendary explorer Henry Morton Stanley.

#HistoryKeThread: When Colonial Officials Adopted Locals As Mistresses

Hell hath no fury like a randy colonial officer stationed miles away from conjugal comfort. In the early colonial years, the Governors' subordinates were initially men taken over from Imperial British EA Company (IBEAC). Later on, a professional class of colonial civil servants was recruited to take up the many administrative positions opening up in the colony.

#HistoryKeThread

Krapf’s Tough Crusade

In July, 1846, pioneering missionary Ludwig Krapf struggled to attend to his ailing, bed-ridden wife.

Krapf had suffered a debilitating fever and so had his wife, Mrs. Dietrich Krapf, who was in a worse state.... She had days earlier given birth to a baby girl at their budding Rabai mission.

Hours to her death, she asked Krapf to bury her right there at Rabai, saying she needed her remains to "constantly remind the passersby of the great object which...

#HistoryKeThread:

After Kinoo, westwards along the Nairobi-Nakuru highway is a place called Karûri. It was named after Agîkûyû chief Karûri wa Gakure, who actually hailed from Kangema in present-day Murang'a county. Chief Karûri made trading trips from his village, trudging with his caravan along the edge of the Aberdares towards Kikuyu mostly, and at times Kijabe and Naivasha.

#HistoryKeThread: In his book, The Making Of A Colony, Lord Cranworth made comparisons between various communities in Kenya.

The comparisons were made between 1908 and 1912, when the book was published. He had fond things to say about the Luo, but wasn’t half as flattering in his analysis of, say, the Agîkûyû or the Kamba.

In his observed opinion, the lakeside community was made up of hard working men.

#HistoryKeThread: The Handshake In Kano

We know that the Uganda Railway was from 1896 called so because Kisumu, which was the destined railhead, was part of Uganda. Even as part of then Uganda, large swathes of western Kenya as we know them today were collectively referred to as the Nandi Protectorate.

#HistoryKeThread #MzeeKenyattaMemorial

Sometime in 1976, James Kanyotu, the time the Head of Kenya's Special Branch, summoned an urgent meeting between him, AG Charles Njonjo, and the Head of Civil Service, Geoffrey Karîîithi. The meeting was held at Kanyotu's residence. The meeting at Redhill had been triggered by Dr. Bernard's worrisome diagnosis of the man who had led Kenya since independence.

#HistoryKeThread At around the time of this thread, at 1030HRS twenty years ago, on 7th August 1998, guards at the rear entrance of the United States of America embassy building in downtown Nairobi waved down a truck for routine inspection. It was halted as its occupants... ...tried to force their way into the rear entrance of the embassy building, situated at the busy junction of Nairobi’s Haile Selassie and Moi Avenues.

A brief argument ensued between embassy guards and the truck’s “arab-looking men”, who insisted they had a package to deliver...

1/17 #HistoryKeThread Feature On The Wakamba 2/17 Charles Dundas was a British administrator serving in ukambani around 1910.

1/8 #HistoryKeThread: New Year’s Eve Norfolk Hotel Bombing 2/8 These government officials led by, among others, G.G. Kariuki, who was responsible for security, and investigators including badass sleuth Patrick Shaw, the stocky white man in this photo, had to cut short their new year festivities to be here.

1/12 #HistoryKeThread: Scotsman G.F. Scott-Elliot was a botanist and adventurer who landed in Mombasa on 1st November 1893. 2/12 From his memoirs, we learn how early explorers went about securing the services of porters.

1/30 #HistoryKeThread: Raila Odinga accompanied by his late son Fidel on a tour of the Nyayo House torture chambers in 2002. 2/30 The torture chambers gained notoriety in the 1980s, when one of the most atrocious crackdowns on dissidents in Kenya by the country’s dreaded Special Branch took place.

1/9 #HistoryKeThread: One of the ways in which the so-called "professor of Politics", Retired President Moi, executed survival politics was in his creative knack for appeasing various communities. 2/9 At the dawn of pluralism in the early 90s, he went about dishing out districts as political gifts.

1/16 #HistoryKeThread: This is John H. Patterson, he of the Man Eaters of Tsavo (book) fame and engineer-in-charge of the railway bridge at Tsavo. He is pictured at camp on 10th December 1898, a day after he killed the first of two lions that terrorized... 2/16 ...workers camped by the Tsavo River.

1/22 #HistoryKeThread: The Luo Of 1909 As Observed And Recorded By American “Tourists” 2/22 Earlier in the week, I made reference to author Peter Macqueen’s book, “In wildest Africa, the record of hunting and exploration trip through Uganda, Victoria Nyanza, the Kilimanjaro region and British East Africa”.

1/23 #HistoryKeThread: In early 1905, Nandi warriors attacked a caravan in the Uasin Gishu plateau and made away with unspecified items. 2/23 This was not the kind of welcome that a task force from the Zionist Congress expected. Ironically, the task force had come on a mission to scout for land in which Jews could be settled harmoniously; land that the British Foreign Office had set aside for...

1/7 #HistoryKeTrivia In the late 1940s, Kenya Africa Union (KAU) officials embarked on a countrywide tour to recruit various African leaders to its cause. 2/7 In Nyanza, they found a young man, Oginga Odinga, who was in the process of launching a vast cooperative society. Oginga was its Managing Director.

1/7 #HistoryKeThread: Thomas Joseph Odhiambo Mboya (August 15, 1930 - July 5, 1969) and Luis de Assis Correia, co-founders of Africa-America Foundation, Kenya, flanked by some of the 81 students en route to the USA on the first charter flight airlift from... 2/7 ...Embakasi Airport,...