Kampala Freight area.

[M. Hardy-Randall]

Found this view from 1962 of the Kampala area.

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[Kevin Wilson-Smith]

Also a very nice picture! Typical East African - I do not what really conveys that though - the sky? Buildings?

Where you there? Your picture?

[M. Hardy-Randall]

Kevin,

I was based in Kampala working on contract with the EAR&H. I spent three months in the Kampala area before going on to Kisumu and then Mombasa. After three months in each place I returned to Kampala for another two years.

Malcolm

[Kevin Wilson-Smith]

Aha - I was born in Kenya and grew up there. Then briefly worked in a couple of places before leaving finally in 1973.

[John Ashworth]

Ah, you oldies. I didn't arrive in Uganda until 1976 at the tender age of 21!

[M. Hardy-Randall]

I am going through all my slides of East Africa, of which about two hundred were of the railways. It would appear that I spent more time photographing the lake steamers and the railways than I did doing any work! Alas, so far all of the slides appear to have been ruined by mildew, after many years in store. Can it be removed? I imagine not as the colours would have gone. All of them date from 1962 to 1965 when I left for the Middle East, which had no railways!

During my stay in Kampala I came across a timetable of the Imperial Airways seaplane service, pasted onto the wall of the shed at the end of Port Bell pier! That was the way to get to East Africa, no curling up in a Comet 4 seat trying to get some sleep after eating airline food.

Malcolm

[John Ashworth]

It would appear that I spent more time photographing the lake steamers and the railways than I did doing any work!

During my time in southern Sudan in the 1980s we found the old diary of one of the Catholic missions on the Nile just outside Malakal from around 1940 or '41. Reading through its faded pages we came to the conclusion that the missionaries of that era spent more time having dinner with the different officials who passed by on their steamers (each department had its own Nile steamer - education, health, agriculture, police, post office, etc) than doing any work. That and shooting animals from the verandas of the mission houses. I obviously arrived around 40 years too late!

Malcolm, please keep posting these pictures when you have time - I find them really interesting.