Gazette - 11/3/1930 - Appointed Acting Office Superintendent, Education Dept. Wef 27 February 1930 - Miss Pauline Somen

Glimpses - Post WW1 - Dozens more Jews made their way to Kenya, most notably the extraordinary Somen family. The Somens had emigrated from Lithuania to South Africa, fallen upon hard times and died young, but not before producing 7 bright children who perforce learned to fend for themselves. In 1924 or 1925 Pauline, the youngest daughter, just 19, answered an advertisement for assistant leader of the Girl Guides in Kenya. And got the position. Shortly thereafter her oldest brother, David, a bright young man who was teaching in the Transvaal, came up to see his little sister. Once in Nairobi he got a job with Education Department, first teaching at the Nairobi Primary School, then rising to become headmaster of the Duke of Gloucester the government secondary school for Asians in Pumwani.

Meanwhile his younger brother Israel Somen, who had been put into an orphanage from which he escaped at age 16, pitched up, and found a job with the Railways. The other 2 sisters, Liebe Somen and Anne Somen, made their way up to Kenya, too, as did their brother Morris. Initially all the young Somens lived together in a house in Parklands and although, as David's son Michael says, "being all strong-minded characters, they fought energetically among themselves, but they always presented an intimidatingly united Somen front to anyone who dared criticise one of them".

Michael Somen, David Somen's son: Pauline was actually the first member of the Somen family to go to Kenya, four siblings followed later. She sometimes called herself Polly or Pessy.  She applied for and got the job of Personal Assistant to Lady Baden-Powell who was the titular head of the world-wide Girt Guides who was living at the time in Nyeri in Kenya with Lord Baden-Powell, founder of the movement and Chief Scout.
Pauline met Joe Needier in Nairobi and they ran bookshops in Mombasa and Kampala which weren't very successful. They returned to South Africa where they were rather more successful with hearing aid businesses. Joe was deaf and claimed to have been deafened by the bomb that set off the Easter Rising outside the Dublin Post Office in 1916 where he was on holiday at the time. They both retired in Durban, South Africa where they died and are buried.