Charles Newton worked for a printing firm in Eldoret. Going shopping once a week in Eldoret entailed Ethel carrying empty baskets (known as kikapos) and pushing Michael part of the way in his pushchair. It was a couple of miles to town by a shortcut over pretty rough terrain and a good way along a narrow path through waist high grass. It was often a long hot walk and when we reached the town we would go to the only café, run by the Barton sisters, and sip orange juice through straws.

Eldoret consisted of two main streets running parallel to each other with a short one forming the bar of the aitch. One was known as the Indian street and consisted of shops run by Indians with a few European garages and a cinema at the bottom. Indians were not allowed to buy property in the European street. McNab Mundell’s was near the top of this street and had wide red stone steps leading up to the showroom which had room to house a tractor and several mowers and other small items of farm machinery.   We used to pop in to see my father and “Beardie” (Eric Wolston Beard).

After shopping we would leave the full baskets with Charles to bring home at lunchtime, and we would walk home. On some occasions we seemed to time it to travel home with him in the yellow Chrysler – a great joy. We would also drop in to see Charles at work, setting fiddly little metal letters into the typesets. It wasn’t until years later that it was discovered that Charles was suffering from lead poisoning due to his work. During those years I just remember him coming home early from work quite often, having headaches, needing to lie down and always feeling unwell. I think Ethel’s patience was sorely tried because she was not sure whether he was malingering – it went on for so many years with the doctors assuring them there was nothing wrong with him.

The Newtons were terribly hard up. Ethel ran a little nursery school at the house for us two plus about four other children. She also made and painted parchment lampshades, working late into the night, to make money. She did all the laundry by hand, washing the clothes in a galvanized wash tub on the back lawn. This was poverty indeed in a land where everyone had two or three servants and labour was very cheap. I can remember her getting upset when the scrubbing made her fingers bleed and stain the clothes. In the early days Aunt Ethel, as I called her, used to cook on a little double paraffin stove with formica windows in the front. Later they were able to employ a cook and build a brick kitchen with a wood burning Dover stove.

Those were happy days for me. I saw a lot of my father who called every day after the office closed. He often played tennis on the murram garden court with Ethel and Charles and friends. In the evenings, while Michael and I sat at a little table on the verandah and ate our supper (a favourite being cubes of bread in hot milk and spread with brown sugar and water biscuits with Marmite or sometimes a boiled egg – very simple fare), the grownups would listen to records on the gramaphone  and sometimes dance. I  expect they had quite a few friends but I don’t remember them. I think my father was quite lonely, although he belonged to the local sports clubs and still played a good deal of sport. 

We saw quite a bit of Charles’s brother Brian who lived at Moiben and was married to Nora. She had long dark hair which she wore in two plaits wound up up like earphones over her ears. Other visitors were Warwick and Marjorie Guy from Baraton near Kakamega (Marjorie was Charles Newton’s sister).  She was known  jokingly as “Plain Auntie Marjorie” as I had once rushed to answer a knock at the door and then run back saying  “it’s all right it’s just plain Auntie Marjorie”!

There was a time when Charles and my Dad were interested in getting fit and someone had suggested that early morning cold baths and then a brisk walk was an excellent thing. I believe they discussed it and even tried it out and found the shock of getting into an icy bath in the morning quite horrible. I remember that they decided that Michael and I should be put through this ordeal as well. In the event they were horribly disappointed that we sat quite amicably in the cold water and made little complaint!

There were some weekends when I would go home and spend the night with my father. Anything I did with him was sheer joy and I would gladly run errands or do anything he asked. I adored him and have no recollection of ever being reprimanded – perhaps I never needed it where he was concerned. On the occasions of staying with him at his house, we used to get up very early while it was still dark and go on special walks – perhaps picking mushrooms or exploring the river bank and watching birds and other wildlife.   About 8pm on Sunday evening he would walk me back down the road to the Newtons. There were blue gums (Eucalyptus) planted down each side of the road. They were enormous, 90 to 100 ft tall, and one could barely see the road. My father never bothered with a torch but I remember how safe I felt with my hand in his, while he told me not to be afraid of the dark and how he liked it, describing it like a warm comforting blanket.

Sometimes on a Sunday we would set off in his old box body car to go out to the Nandi farm to see how things were doing and to pay the labour. This may have been before my mother died. All the way he would sing songs to me – “Two little bluebirds”, “It’s a long way to Tipperary”, the “Yarn of the Nancy Bell” (a poem actually) and many others. It was on one of these occasions that we got stuck in heavy mud and had to put on chains. No front-wheel drive in those days so they were only used on the back wheels and had to be put on before you got stuck! For those who have never heard of them, they were two parallel lengths of heavy link chain with joining 6-link pieces across so that laid out in front of each back tyre they looked like ladders. You then drove on to them and got out and wrapped them round the tyre and hooked the two ends together. After we’d got through the bad patches we had to stop and my father had to get them off – a filthy job. He had stopped near a small stream and went down to wash his hands. Unfortunately his signet ring came off in the washing and, although we spent a long time feeling about in the slime and sand we never found it. Indeed on subsequent visits to the farm my father couldn’t resist stopping and having another search.

Michael and I had a couple of bicycles and used to go on rides within a few  miles of the house. No one worried about our safety in those days. Michael’s bike had no brakes on the handlebars and was stopped by back-pedalling. This worked fairly well except when he wanted to talk to me. He had a very bad stammer and in his efforts to say something he would often stamp down hard on the pedals, bringing the bike to a sudden full stop and catapulting him over the handlebars. He seldom cried and I would just sit unsympathetically on my bike and wait patiently for him to resume the ride and his sentence. As he grew older he became adept at changing the format of his words when he became stuck.   

When Jock returned from UK I think he must have been 14. I was five years younger and Michael two yrs younger than me. Jock must have spent some time with us because I remember on one occasion we cycled along the bank of the Sosiani river. It was a narrow path and much concentration was needed to keep going and avoid the tussocks of grass. Michael’s little bike was particularly difficult and on this occasion, he back pedalled to avoid a tussock and cartwheeled over the handlebars into the river with the bike on top of him. We managed to scramble down the bank and drag him out but there was no sign of the bike. It was quite a long walk home and no one was best pleased with us but it was decided that my father would have to try and retrieve the bike. I suppose we must have driven to the nearest point on the road and then walked back along the path to the spot we remembered. The ninth fairway of the local golf club ran down to the river on the far bank and it was unfortunate that, as my father had decided the best course of action was to strip and get down into the muddy waters naked, a foursome of stout female golfers were striding down the opposite hill. They watched fascinated and with much amusement as this eminent member of their Club hauled his naked mud-spattered body up the bank, dragging the bike after him. There was little we could do to help and we thought it was hilarious, as did his audience, which seemed to have grown and been added to from nearby fairways while he’d been groping around in the shoulder deep filthy waters.

It was also on this occasion we noticed the nest of a hammer-headed stork (“hammerkop” as it was known locally) high in one of the thorn trees. My father decided to have a closer look at it. The nest was huge – and he wondered just how big it really was. We returned to investigate a few days later. My father climbed the tree and burrowed through the side with his arm and when it was at full stretch he was able to wave his hand about, and this was in the inside chamber of the nest, so it was in fact two yards wide and some of the building materials were quite substantial pieces of wood. Amazing birds!

Next: Rene