About 1952 the Mau Mau rebellion was in full swing in Kenya, instigated by some of the Kikuyu tribe that lived around Nairobi. They mostly massacred the black people but also attacked whites whenever they had the chance. This caused the school to recruit the older students into fire brigades and to give us regular British Army uniforms and training. On weekends we would go into the forrest and bush country and train in ambush tactics and firing our rifles. We enjoyed that very much and typical of young people we were not afraid of possible dangers. We were about 200 strong and I am sure we were quite capable of defending our school from the Mau Mau. Fortunately we did not have to but we did assist the regular British Army in some terrorist sweeps through some villages.
About 3 miles from our school was a Catholic girls school and some weekends we would sneak over and go through the fence to visit the girls. The Nuns were quite vigilant at times and would chase us away with a lot of unpleasant verbal remarks.
One day while in class, we heard a strange noise and our teacher knew what it was and told us to follow him outside. As we looked up where the sound was coming from, we saw our first jet planes, British Meteor fighters. That was quite an impressive sight.
End of 1953 the seniors were required to take our final exams, conducted by the University of Cambridge, in England. Mercifully I passed with Credits as indicated by my Cambridge Certificate in my Africa photo album. After high school, I attended an Accounting school in Nairobi and lived at the local YMCA. My friend Tasso Ioanides and I went to school in the mornings and in the afternoon we worked at a car dealer repair shop, doing inventory and stock work. That paid for all our expenses of the YMCA and the school. One weekend we were walking around town near the New Stanley Hotel and we saw Clark Gable and Ava Gardner; they were in the country to film the movie Mogambo. I saw that movie about 2 years later. On another weekend, we saw Princess Elizabeth and Prince Phillip, in a motorcade. Within a few days they flew back to England when the news of the death of King George VI was announced and Elizabeth became Queen. Also another time we saw another American actor, Johnny Weismuller. He played Tarzan at that time. When we completed the Accounting school, we left Nairobi and hitch hiked back to Tanganyika. Our first ride was one third of our trip back home. Foolishly we left the village that we were dropped off at and started walking the dirt road, expecting to hike to Arusha on the next vehicle that came along. Unfortunately there was not much traffic that day and by nightfall we were still walking. We could hear lions and hyennas in the distance and we knew that we had made a bad mistake and it was too far to turn back by then. Luckily around 7:30 we saw headlights approaching. As luck would have it, a Greek fellow who knew us stopped and picked us up. What a relief that was! He took us to my friend's house where we stayed overnight. Next day his Dad drove me to my home in Moshi, at the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Time wise, this was early 1955 and fortunately I got an accounting job with Cooper Bros., a large English accounting firm. From time to time they would send a couple of us to another town to audit the books of various companies. It was a great experience staying at hotels and getting paid. 1956, my Dad died; he had a small grocery store. I left my job to look after the store. That was not a good decision but it was what happened.


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