KFA - Served the KFA faithfully and with outstanding skill for 24 years and died tragically a few weeks before his retirement fell due. He arrived in Kenya as a boy of 14, unable to speak a word of English, having come, by way of Palestine, from Poltava in the Ukraine: a refugee, with his mother and 3 brothers, from a Russian pogrom against the Jews. An uncle who had emigrated to SA, and reached EA just before WW1, advised the family to follow, and they arrived in 1915 with nothing but the clothes they stood up in and a few personal belongings, and with Russian and Hebrew as their only tongues. At school in Nairobi, Archie Ruben learnt English; then he found work in a shop called the Dustpan belonging to Mr S. Jacobs. His work took him subsequently to Eldoret and Nakuru. Then with a brother, he opened a duka at Rongai. The two young men had little capital and lived, and worked and slept in the shop, fetching their supplies from Nakuru in an ox-cart, a journey that took 3 days. When they had saved up a little money they borrowed some more and bought a share in a farm. Their maize, in their first season, fetched Shs. 13/50 a bag. Two years later the locusts came and what was left of their crop sold at Shs. 3/- a bag. And so they left the farm: the brother for the goldfields, Archie Ruben for a lowly-paid job as storekeeper to the KFA in Nakuru.

From this small start his job grew in importance until he became head buyer for the Association, responsible, in his later years, for  spending with shrewdness and prudence £4 million a year in about 20 countries, and travelling half the world over in pursuit of supplies. ..... (more)

East Africa & Rhodesia - 10/1/57 - Mr Aaron Ruben, who has died in Nakuru, had worked for the KFA for 25 years. Previously he had kept stores, in the Rongai district, in which he was at one time joint owner of a farm. He had visited this country several times on the association's business.

Nairobi Forest Road Cemetery - Aaron Samuel Ruben, British, age 54, died at Nakuru 7/12/56 father of Elizabeth and bro of Eddie and David

Barnes - Nakuru North Cemetery - Beryl Dora Ruben, born 13/3/1904, died 10/6/1955, beloved wife of A. Ruben and mother of Elizabeth Hannah

KFA - Worked in the trading Dept. of the KFA and became executive officer of the War Supplies Section.

Hut has Aaron Reuben 1930 Molo Farm Rongai Duka

Gazette - 11/11/1925 - Application for Wine Merchants & Grocers Liquor Licence - A Ruben, Rongai Stores

Gazette 20 Sep 1955 wife's probate