Tsavo - My great-grandparents [Aggetts?] ......... arrived in the Colony in 1907 complete with their wagons, their stock, their horses, and their 'know-how', eager to build a country and establish for themselves a new life. The land they were first allotted by the Government lay in the heart of the Masai country ......... In fact, Masailand turned into a settlers' nightmare. My great-grandfather therefore welcomed the unexpected news that the Government had decided to move him to an area known as Laikipia, so that his land could be handed over to the Laikipia Masai ....….   

Orphans - My family were among the early pioneers of this country. They came in 1909 when my father was a child of 7 and the only mode of transport was by bullock wagon. My grandmother, now 86, remembers Nairobi as consisting of no more than a few tin huts and one dusty street. ...... My father went to the first school to be opened in Nairobi. Some of its pupils had to walk 60 miles to railhead, sometimes more, in order to be able to attend; they set out carrying a gun and a cooking pot and on their way shot game for food as required. ............ My childhood was spent on my father's farm at Gilgil ....... I remember my brother, Peter, shooting his first lion at the age of 14, and how my mother, my 2 sisters and I took refuge in a tree while my father and Peter entered the thicket where the lion was crouching. ........ My brother was one of the first men to join the National Parks service when it was set up in 1947; at that time he was 18 ........ in 1955 when I was 20 and my daughter Jill was 6 months old, I came to live in Tsavo East.