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NEW 10/04/08

Penny Stragnell (nee Butler) has written with wonderful memories of Eldoret!
I spent more time on the website and think you have done a wonderful job. Memories of various incidents came flooding back and one day I plan to write them all down,- probably in my retirement which is not yet on the horizon.

Do you remember the giant cane rat incident in the dining hall? And what about the day Kenyatta came to visit and some of us were bussed (cattle trucked) to a rally (it must have been a political rally and what on earth were we doing there?!) in Eldoret in the evening. I so clearly remember the incongruity of us Convent girls, in our white concert frocks and felt hats, singing Christmas carols at the top of our lungs whilst standing in line to process past 'His Eminence'. The greatest incongruity was that we were positioned in line just in front of representatives of the Kikuyu nation in full regalia and spent most of the time happily negotiating for parts of their costume! - I had hopes of ostrich feathers...

 

I recently unearthed a copy of 'Loreto in Africa' '66 - '67. In it is a rather dreadful poem I wrote, - my one and only attempt for publication! More interestingly there are some funny reminders of events such as the production of 'Zurika' the Gypsy Maid.' I recall my jaws ached with the effort of keeping a wide smile fixed for hours whilst on stage to please Mother Superior who became quite furious if we let it drop even for a moment.

 

And then there was the time..... too many memories for now, but I will get round to writing them up eventually - I'm making lists. Any jogs to the old memory gratefully received. My e-mail is penny@playchutes.com

 

Because my family travelled so much I did not keep in touch with friends I made at Loreto but I do remember many people quite well and would love to hear from anyone who remembers me or was there during the years '65 - '67. A few names to conjure with: Elizabeth Davies, Lesley Smith, Sandra and Bo Johnson, Susannah Buchanan-Allan, Carol Barrett, Lesley Evans and Gail Wolfendon (an inseparable pair who spoke in 'eggy' language and always seemed to have masses of delicious 'tuck' they flaunted!), Felicity Ross and Melanie Hickman and Lila Paczesniak (Sp?), who was Polish and a close friend of mine. A lass called Flora Durwood Brown was a friend for a short while but was involved in a terrible car accident on her way back to school after Christmas '65 I think. She was from Mombasa and I never heard anything else apart from the fact she survived the accident but was in a wheel chair. We were Forms 2 and 3 in those years but I do remember some of the exalted 4th and 5th formers too! 

 

A brief summary of what's happened to me since: I returned to England after two amazingly impressionable years in East Africa. My family travelled more and I 'picked up' a lovely husband in California from whence he and I returned to the UK and began our own family in a little village in Warwickshire. During our twenty years in Radway, we brought up our three sons and I completed a teaching degree. Spent twelve years at the chalk face and then began a business with my best pal. We have worked from home ever since although we did make a big move to new premises in '96. Our web site, should anyone be interested to look, is www.playchutes.com We've had a great time building our small business and though we'll never be millionaires it's been fun and has allowed us to work from home and be our own bosses.

 

Well, I think that's quite enough to bore the pants off anyone who happens across it so I'll stop. Thanks again Jane for your wonderful efforts on the web site and I'll keep watching for news and hoping some blast from the past might come my way.

 

All the best,

 

 

 

 

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Gail Miller (Msongari. '61) is reminded by Pauline Canning's notice of Mother Peter Claver's death that this particular nun terrified her into doing well academically.

 I remember, vividly, Mother Claver's swift, robes-flying, entrances into the classroom; her absolutely no-nonsense attitude to our work whether it was Math or French; I remember wanting so badly too please her, yet I do not recall a smile ever creasing her face!

 Some of my students at Alamo Navajo called me a "hard case," and "strict," and I can only hope that they will remember me as I remember Mother Peter Claver: as an individual who had an awesome impact on my teenage brain; and, she was fair.

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My daughter saw your website of the Loreto schools and e-mailed it to me.

 

I have looked at it with interest as I am an old loreto girl - attending Loreto in Mombasa 1958 - 1969.(3-15 yrs of age) my name at the time was Stephanie Wait.

 

I have just returned from Kenya with my daughter showing her the slights and sounds of Kenya - safari then beaches of Mombasa.

 

I went to the old school with my daughter and saw the headmistress and we were there for some 2.5 hours. I gave her my memories of the school noting that they had made some changes - new buildings. The front of the school has a side building which is the hall come church every Friday. The stairs at the back of the school have gone (students used them not the teachers they used the front stairs) and has been replaced with an annex comprising of the kindergarten, library, cookery & science rooms.

 

The school is a kindergarten & primary school. The head would like a new building for secondary. She was surprised that at my time it was Kindergarten through to Secondary. She has no old memories of the school - I suggested that she contact Msongari as they may have had them sent to there when the school closed for a short while.

 

The Bababo tree is still there. They Kindergarten (side buildings) are now part of the junior school. The senior changing room is now the headmistress & secretary's room. They now have a swimming pool - we had to go to the Mombasa Womens Institute. School buses - two would like more. And they have staff quarters for the drivers, janitor etc to mention a few. The  changing rooms at the end of the field have gone. And one of the large white walls which were at the end of the field has gone.

 

The view that you could see from the back of the school has gone from the sea to houses. Oceanic Hotel has been knocked down and is begin replaced by the Aga Khan University. There is a wall that surrounds the school now we had a flimsy fence, did not bother us.

 

The large bell that had to be rung every day at noon is still there but very little rope - I am not surprised as when I rang it the bell it fell of and I let go of the rope at the last minute otherwise I would have been over the top head first into the bell!!!

 

They still have the folding blackboards that use to divde the classrooms. They only take in Catholics now - she was surprised that the school in my day took in other religions.

My name is Annelieke Erkelens. My sister Alice and I attended Loreto Convent Msongari in 1975-1977. We were (are) a Dutch family and my father worked for nearly three years in Kenya. In 1977 we moved back to Holland.

My sister did her first levels there, I just spent a year in standard 6. I was about 10 years old at that time. It was so much fun to come across your website. I sometimes fall asleep dreaming and thinking of and walking through all the buildings, the sportsfields, the parking lot, the swimmingpool, trying to remember it right, and I think I'm not very far off if I look at the picture again I saw at your website.

Moving from Europe to an African city aged 9, is a very big change. My life has since then always been divided in "before" and "after" Nairobi, Kenya.

 

I had a great time at Loreto, even though I hardly spoke the language in the beginning. I remember entering during the last month of standard 5 (was it Miss Ballhorn?) who kept asking numbers and than said:  ten, mine is eight, is two. I didn't understand why her numbers were always different than the numbers of the pupils, (hardly speaking any English) until after a few weeks of having to learn English to survive, I understood she said: ten minus eight is two. That is my first memory of Loreto.

 

My other memory is the sad departure of Miss Ballhorn back to America and the introduction of Miss Stokes from Australia, who would be my classteacher in the 6th grade. I didn't like her at first, until she decided to treat us to a private concert on her guitar. She played very well. My friend were Monica Oomen and Gösta Bakker, also Dutch. Other girls I remember were Narriman, who discovered she had astma that year and whom we visited at home. Also there was a Wanjiru or Wanja, a very tall (in my memories) Fiona, an American Beverly, a very blond Swedish girl, a Russian or Yugoslavian MoiÇa, who also didn't speak english and entered class halfway through the year. We did a musical at the end of the year called "Alladin". I was lucky enough to be the princess. My sister Alice performed as Fagin in end-of-year-musical-Oliver Twist. Music lessons were given by an English woman. Her daughter also sang very beautiful. I have always wondered if the artist Enya is this same girl.

 

There was a sister Cannis? a (head?)sister Mary. A Miss Veakings was always at the swimmingpool and in the tenniscourt. I can't remember all the names on the T-shirts we would be wearing at sportstournaments: green was "Ball", and the other blue, red and yellow? "Ward" or something? Help me out please. French was given by a very large and tall Asian woman. Having spent the last 20 years on summerholidays in France, I wonder how anyone could have learned French in Kenya, considering her very bad pronounciation/ pronunciation (sorry, my English isn't that good...)

 

We started each morning with an assembly for the lower standards and on Friday we had a big assembly with all the pupils, during which we sang the national Anthem (e mungu nguvu yetu, or something). Gosh, how everything comes back to me.....

 

My sister and I were day-pupils. My brother Govert attended St. Mary's. My little brother Coen went to the Dutch School. My mother had a day-job driving us all to school. Maybe someone remembers that she drove a white Volvo with a big sticker of Pluto (Donald Ducks' dog) on the front and stickers of flowers on the back. Details, details.....

 

It was a great time. I have fond memories of miss Stokes. The only thing I really didn't like was the schooluniform. That was completely new to me. Although we did know how to distinct ourselves by wearing more beautiful shoes than the next girl.

 

Well, I had a great time reading some stories on this website. I hope someones likes to read my memories, even though I may have miss-spelled some words.. I'm especially happy with the air-photo of Loreto Convent Msongari.

 

Annelieke Erkelens, 17-06-1966 (whoops, that is 40 years old in two days!)

My name is Dani Kaye (nee Leuenberger).  davekaye@ntlworld.com I attended Msongari from '65 to '68. I have a lot of vivid memories...

 

- The time a thunderstorm flooded the school hall when we were supposed to be rehearsing in choir, and I and someone else (who were you?  Remind me) were sent running to report it. We spotted Mother Germaine and told her all about it, rather excitedly and expecting her to thank us for the information.  Instead she gave us one of her famous measured stony looks and, because we'd taken off our shoes and socks in the hall to keep them dry,  and not put them on again before running out, she gave us a thorough dressing-down for still being barefoot.  It's amazing how upset and deflated and miserable I felt about that, for weeks.  Naturally I never let on.

 

- Piano lessons with dear old Mrs Spielmann (such an appropriate name), who had a tattoo on her left arm from her internment days in a Nazi concentration camp.  She died sometime in 1969 or 1970.  A marvellously gifted and temperamental teacher.  Does anyone else remember her?  I recall one time, when I was supposed to be practising Bach, I couldn't resist trying a rather noisy jazz improvisation on the theme.  Then suddenly there she was.  I was petrified.  But she said "Dani, vot an interesting idea.  Do it again, vill you?"  Naturally, with her watching, it became practically impossible to comply.  Bless her memory.

 

- Catherine Eckersley and I marching around the school fields, cracking jokes and singing in harmony.  I should love to hear where she's got to - she SHOULD be head of the Royal Academy by rights, a fantastic musician.  She had a disreputable looking little soft toy dog called 'Fappy' who used to make the most trenchant remarks.

 

- The flower patterns on the surface of the avenue between Saint Mary's and Msongari.  How I hated seeing them destroyed under the feet of the procession.

 

- Running away from hockey balls;  loathsome things, second only to hockey sticks.  And the teacher shouting "DAnielle, you're supposed to run TOWARDS the ball, not AWAY from it!"  in deep disgust.

 

- Swimming, competing. I was good at that and had a lot of fun.  One day someone suggested we should have a 'synchronised swimming' team, and the first session we had we all came out spluttering and choking, having taken water up our noses etc.  But we persevered, and managed some patterns in time.

 

- Miss Brennan and her fascinating Latin, History and RE lessons. What a breath of fresh air she was. - And the great art lessons in the little art shed at the bottom of the garden, under a huge wild coffee tree.

 

- Discovering that I really loved Hemingway, dissecting his 'Old Man and the Sea' with a great deal of enthusiasm, only to be told in no uncertain terms by Marlene Roche and one or two others in class that I was a nerd, a swot, a boring old.  The teacher was Mrs Rainy, I believe.  She walked like a ballerina.

 

- Working on an Optical Illusion talk with Mother Cyril and my schoolmate Selina (family name forgotten).  It won 2nd prize in the Kenya Students' Science Congress that year (1967).  We also experimented with making bread dough rise with dry ice (it didn't - not very well).  And does anyone else remember the owl that spent a whole term sitting on top of the equipment cupboard next to the door, in her lab?  Mother Cyril (our nickname for her was 'Squirrel') adored it. She was my favourite nun.

 

- Drawing cartoons all over the blackboard and getting caught by one of the nuns ... Can't remember her name.  I was incapable of resisting the lure of chalk and board.  Should have known then that I'd end up teaching (I'm covering A level and undergraduate Psychology in Cambridge).

 

- Learning to read Gregorian notation in chapel. 

 

- The lovely old panelled library with its stained-glass windows. Perfect for reading Shakespeare.

 

- How silent and scary the place became within a few minutes of  the final bell on the last day of the year.  There is a quality to the silence of a deserted school on a sunny afternoon that makes your average midnight haunting seem like a puppet show.

 

- And does anyone remember the 'underwater' theme of the 6th Form dance, for which I painted mermaids all over the place? This must have been in 1967, because I was a Third Former and not allowed to attend.

 

Aaaah, those were the days... 

 

Love to all, please get in touch - davekaye@ntlworld.com