Hut - S.Le M. Laver's 'Pa' 'Peter' 1931 Founders St. Andrew's School Turi married to 'Ma' Jean Miller

Curtis - p. 123 - 'Peter Lavers and St. Andrew's, Turi' ' ...... Peter Lavers was teaching at Winchester during the 1920s and planning to enter the Church. However, it came to him while riding his bicycle up the hill into Shaftesbury that he ought instead to go to Kenya. He cancelled his training plans, sailed for Mombasa in the Manitoba in 1926, and took a job on a Limuru coffee farm. At a musical evening he met Jean Miller of the staff of Limuru Girls' School. It was a meeting of like minds. ....…..

Peter and Jean had decided, very early in their acquaintanceship, that their mission was to start a school for young children. In order to save money with which to make a start Peter Lavers got a job in Tanganyika managing a sisal plantation. 'I didn't like the job - it was nothing but slave driving, which after teaching was a pretty poor swap. So we decided that the time had come for Jean to give in her notice. She came down to Dar es Salaam and we were married about the 5 December 1930.

'Starting the School' We had been thinking a lot about this. We had been to the Director of Education, who told us that in his opinion the time was entirely wrong to start a school with any hope of success, because he said we would get precious little in the way of fees the way things were going, as the recession was right on us and there was no spare money about anywhere. Many of the settlers were coming down from up country by that time to get assisited passages back to Britain - completely ruined, having lost their farms and everything. We had been offered some land at a place called Turi, by a man who owned the land up there and had 4 or 5 children of his own for whom he wanted a school. ......... I prayed about this and the answer was to agree. So that was how the site was actually chosen, and everyone can see that it was not Jean and I who chose it, but the Lord himself.

We opened the school soon after Christmas 1930 - 2 rather scared young people, unknown except for the people in Limuru who knew us in the old days ......... 15 children arrived for that first term and we had one elderly lady to help - a nurse - very old - poor dear, she was always bursting into tears because she had lost a son. We were having great difficulty, as the Director of Education had warned us beforehand we would, in getting fees in actual cash, because nobody had any money in Kenya and anybody who was out there in those days will realize how jolly hard it was. I had to take bags of wheat, maize, potatoes and all sorts of produce in lieu of fees. And of course as the numbers went up we needed more and more food, so it didn't work out too badly, but it was a very difficult time indeed.

Jean Lavers developed talent as a playwright, and wrote plays in which every child had a part. ........... A crisis came in the life of the school in 1944 when the greater part of it was burnt to the ground ......... [with help of Italian POWs including an architect] a new, and much grander school was opened by the Governor ........ Jean Lavers died in 1965 and Peter retired soon afterwards, having handed over the school to a trust administered by the Anglican, Presbyterian and Methodist churches.

Gazette 22 Mar 1960 wife's probate

FindaGrave Jean Lemesurier Miller Lavers BIRTH 15 Jul 1892 South Africa DEATH 10 Jul 1965 (aged 72) BURIAL Kisauni Cemetery Mombasa: Inscription: Jean Lemesurier Lavers M.B.E. / nee Miller / 15.7.92 - 9.7.65 / founder in 1930 / with her loving husband / Peter / of / Saint Andrews School / Turi Kenya / "she fed his lambs"