The next time I met Matt, after my return from Intona Ranch, he was very positive about my collaboration with Alan at Intona ranch. That was good news as I did not need to present to him all the arguments I had prepared. However he tersely informed me that there was still one more hurdle: a final meeting with all institutions to settle the issue. Apparently, a new idea had come to the fore that needed discussion. The Director of KEVRI from Western Kenya had proposed an alternative area of work in Busia, his home area, of course. “You would live at a former leprosy hospice there”, said Matt just managing to suppress a chuckle! I was not amused at his Scottish sense of humour.

The meeting was large and long and then it was closed. I was dismayed as for me, nothing was decided and I felt like holding…

The last night at the Fairview Hotel was a good one and I enjoyed my breakfast in the garden, where I noticed that birdlife in Nairobi was prolific and that there were not only several bird species but there were also large numbers of them! I did not know their names yet, apart from the ubiquitous sparrows that I knew from Uruguay. I was amazed to see birds so tame, in particular a kind of iridescent blue ones with cinnamon chests[2] that would come to my breakfast table expecting something from me! “Cheeky ones”, I thought.

The access to the Fairview Hotel.

It was light by 06:00 hours and dark by 19:00 hours so, unless you covered your ears, it was impossible not to be woken up by the early loud bird chorus. As it is customary, a cup of early morning tea is brought to your room and…

Japanese POWs in Malaya

“From May onwards, prisoners in a terrible state came in daily,” recorded a British gunner unit in Burma, “many of them armed with nothing more dangerous than bamboo spears, trembling with a mixture of malaria and humiliation.”

British soldiers in Burma

But if some proved ready to quit, others did not.  To the end, most Japanese who lost their ships at sea deliberately evaded Allied rescuers.  On the deck of HMS Saumarez, destroyer Captain Martin Power was directing rescue operations after sinking a Japanese convoy off the Nicobars, when he suddenly heard a “clang” against the ship.

Andaman and Nicobars Islands

Peering over the side, he saw a bald, heavily built Japanese man clinging to a scrambling net with one hand, while hammering the nose of a shell against the hull with the other.  Power drew his pistol, leaned over and whacked the man’s head.

The zombie fox is back, and not only has he brought back-up in the form of three equally shouty buddies, but they have been raising absolute hell in our street at night with their part-reanimated corpse, part-Velociraptor shrieking. I have seen/heard them with my own eyes/ears and, a few mornings ago, I found paw prints on our car windscreen which were much too large and too muddy to belong to cats. It seems unlikely that the dog walkers of TW8 would suddenly decide to use parked cars as an obstacle course, so I can only assume that Monsieur Renard and his comrades are to blame. 

Needless to say, this has made our street quite an unnerving place after dark. And, naturellement, it has also made Louis Catorze more desperate than ever before to defy us and go outside at The Front.

As you are aware, he can hear the…

(1) Louis Guion); (2) Isaac Guion; (3)Isaac Guion (II); (4) John Guion; (5) Elijah Guion, Sr.; (6) Elijah Guion, Jr.;  (7) Alfred Beck Guion; (8) Alfred Duryee Guion; (9) Alfred Peabody Guion; (10) Judith Anne Guion

This may or may not be the first house Louis and Thomasse built in New Rochelle. 

Louis Guion built the first house in New Rochelle, New York, on Bonnefoy’s Point (Hudson Park). Louis and Thomasse used the residence as a communal house while early inhabitants built their own homes. It was a cabin built upon a 6 foot stone cellar, sleeping dormer and thatch roof. Smaller homes were built along Boston Post Road, now Huguenot Street that runs through the middle of town, dividing east and west by North Avenue. Louis Guion was an early officer of New Rochelle, serving as a Collector.

The French language continued to be spoken, although by 1739 official…

(1) John Jackson Lewis, (2) Edith May (Lewis) Rider, (3) Marian Faith (Rider) Irwin, (4) Marian Dunlop (Irwin) Guion, (5) Judith Anne Guion.

The following are transcriptions of John Jackson Lewis’s diary and journal of his voyage to California in 1851. He was travelling  from New York to visit his older brother William in San Jose.

Diary:

Spend the day chiefly in writing. Took a walk out to some springs from which the natives were carrying away the water in jars, upon their heads, as fast as it issued from the aperture. On my return, stopped at a grove where some Americans were erecting a hotel. The grove is a beautiful place and contains a considerable variety of trees, both useful and ornamental.

Journal:

Spent a good deal of the day writing up my journal, which had got sadly in arrears. Walked out in the morning to one of the…

Prince explained the meaning of “Purple Rain” as follows: “When there’s blood in the sky – red and blue = purple… purple rain pertains to the end of the world and being with the one you love and letting your faith/god guide you through the purple rain.” [1]

I frankly have no idea if the late Prince ever saw the Harare jacarandas in October but I am sure that they could have inspired him to some lyric description that I am not able to do.

However, I do not get tired to travel through purple lined avenues and to watch the jacaranda tree in our garden. It is not only the colour and the flower rain that takes place but its perfume and the bees that visit the falling flowers in search of their nectar wealth. So much so that you should not wear flipflops when you wade the stagnant…

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks theme this week is on the farm.

I only have three ancestors that farmed and I have already written about all three.  However in previous posts I wrote more about their lives and very little about their farms. Today, I will focus on John Desens my 2nd great grandfather’s farm.  John owned a farm near Greenwood, Clark, Wisconsin.[1]  A few years ago I made a trip to the court house in Neillsville, Clark, Wisconsin to research John. At that time I did not have paper proof that he was my 2nd great-grandfather and that was the purpose of the trip.  I was searching for his probate file, land records, and the criminal file for the neighbor who killed him.  I didn’t get everything I wanted that day, but I was able to search the Grantor and Grantee books.  I knew his…

For months Paul mentioned the idea of going for a picnic to the Rift Valley. He claimed that along the Narok road there were a number of large acacias that would offer the necessary shade while we could not only enjoy watching game but also looking across this vast depression presided by the Longonot and Suswa volcanoes.

The Great Rift Valley seen from the Kinangop area.

Mout Longonot.

Eventually we were convinced and one Sunday morning we gathered at Paul’s house to travel to the chosen picnic area. Apart from Paul and us other participants were Timothy and his fiancée Jill and a few other friends that filled Paul’s long-wheel base Land Rover. We were not only humans in it as Timothy (the egg cleaner of my earlier post! [1]) decided to take along his red setter called Bitch despite our advice to the contrary!

So, we took the rather…

Everyting I carried
I bore alone.
© Yelling Rosa
29/9 -18

A Bird or a Stump © Yelling Rosa 2011

Over the Heads of Scientists

It goes over the heads of scientists
That the straight line will return
To the starting point and too much light
Into the black holes makes an explosion.
It’s too much for them to speak about
The vast nature of the creation
And they’re minimizing it
Into the one point.
© Yelling Rosa
23/9 -18