Engushai

Name ID 1706

See also

Johnston, Erika The other side of Kilimanjaro
Page Number: 110
Extract Date: 1950's

Managing two farms

As Michael got more and more involved in the Flying Doctor Service and spent most of his time out of Nairobi, the Woods decided to sell their Limuru farm and base themselves at 0l Molog. They had owned Engushai adjoining us for a number of years, running it under management, and now bought Derek Bryceson's farm next to it.

When Sue took over the management of these two farms, most people were rather sceptical. Certainly there were a number of women in East Africa who successfully ran farms, but on the whole they were tough and had been brought up to it. Sue with her deceptive gentleness, tolerance and slightly ethereal quality, was hardly the person to be in charge of a labour force of Africans, who tend to treat their own women like chattels and do not on the whole like European women to be in authority over them. But the doubting Thomases had obviously discounted the steel in two generations of missionaries, whose hardships and frustrations in the Congo, where Sue was born, and tenacity to overcome them, would consider running two farms a comparatively easy challenge, and Sue moved into her new role with remarkable concentration and effect.

Extract ID: 4460

See also

Johnston, Erika The other side of Kilimanjaro
Page Number: 127
Extract Date: 1950's

Jill and Dick Soames

Before the Woods bought Engushai, the farm to our other side, it was owned by a couple called Jill and Dick Soames. Engushai also has a narrow ravine running up one of its boundaries but, as opposed to Brian's, it deepens and widens the further up into the forest it goes. Closely packed tall trees make the ravine dark and forbidding.

The Soames were away at a race meeting when Robin got word that on two successive nights, a lion had killed a Friesland steer. One carcase had been found in the ravine not far from the Soames' house. Robin went over to Brian and together they planned to sit up over the kill. They constructed a hide of two empty forty-four gallon oil drums welded together, at one end of which they fitted a mesh grill and at the other a lid which could be closed into position. They loaded the drums on to the back of one of the Land Rovers, together with two metal trek chains and their shotguns.

Extract ID: 4461
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