Kimba Lodge/Camp

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Assistant District Office posted to Ngorongoro: his house is now the Kimba Lodge.

Russell's partner, George Dove, sported an enormous waxed mustache as his trademark. Dove was a pleasant, hardworking man with his heart in the right place. George, and his son Mike, built two important tourist lodges, Kimba camp at Ngorongoro Crater, and Ndutu Lodge on the southern border of the Serengeti national park.

Footnote: After Tanzania's independence there were a number of deportations of whites from the country. Because of this uncertainty George and his family settled in Australia.

By historical accident the residences of the senior officers were scattered over a distance of 17 miles along the rim:

The Assistant Conservator (Game) living in what is now Forest Resort (Dhillon's Lodge), and

The Assistant Conservator (Forests) having his dwelling and his nurseries at the Old Boma, now Kimba Lodge.

I had 'inherited' two permanent houses and a permanent office built for the Authority by the P.W.D. on the present headquarters site. ... Appreciating the fact that permanent building were undesirable near the road, I permitted no more in that vicinity, concentrating on timber structures which could be salvaged when replaced by other buildings on a new site

"This is my bible," said Mzee Tony adding that he has been with the book since 1966. It was given to him by one George Dove of George Dove Safaris, a company, which had employed him as a clerk and barman first at Kimba Lodge in Ngorongoro and later at Ndutu Safari Lodge between 1966 and 1969.

Following that stint Tony resigned and came back to Arusha town where two years later in 1971 New Arusha Hotels Ltd employed him. Mzee Tony, who was born in Kilema on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro and reached 54 years on 2 October this year, is married (for the last 22 years) to Veneranda Lyimo with whom they have six children.

In January 1967, with four of my Peace Corps colleagues (vacationing in East Africa from Liberia), we stopped at the Kimba Tent Camp on the rim of Ngorongoro crater and were welcomed by George Dove. We didn't have enough money to stay at the Lodge and they said go to the tent camp nearby. We were glad we did. We spent a memorable night as George recounted over dinner hunting safaris he had been on facing lions and other wild beasts. The next morning he took us in his Land Rover to the crater floor and we saw lions, rhino, hippos, etc. and photographed them. I am enclosing two slides from that memorable day.

Please feel free to add them to your Web site and to send them on to Ndutu. I am sorry they are of such poor quality. They were 36-year old faded slides that I scanned into the computer. Unfortunately I have never been back but still hold out a hope that one day I will.

Best regards,

Robert Norris