Happy Valley, The Story of the English in Kenya

 Happy Valley, The Story of the English in Kenya by Nicholas Best is the first book in my admitted walkabout from the usual thriller/murder/mystery/espionage books that we usually review. I may be off the usual reporting for much of the time in the next few months as I prepare for a trip to Africa.

 

Nicholas Best, who was born in Kenya in 1948, provided a nonfiction account of the history of East Africa, focusing primarily on the English who settled in Kenya. He noted that Vasco De Gama, the Portuguese sailor who was the first to round Cape of Good Hope and continue into the Indian Ocean, landed in Mombasa in 1498. The coastal area of East Africa became one with significant sea traffic as the result of trade routes and the slave trade. The Englishman Joseph Thomson, an explorer, is known to have gotten to Lake Victoria in 1882 after crossing the dangerous Masai territory. Best wrote about the development of English society in Kenya, and his focus was primarily on the building of a railway from Mombasa to Uganda, the mysterious death of Lord Erroll, and the Mau Mau revolution in the 1950s. He continued to the end of the colonial era and the temporary chaos that ensued until the country became a stable and productive economy.

 

I thoroughly enjoyed this well-written history. It was a good place to start my study of the history of that part of the world.