 PERSONALITIES |
Kenya has always caught the imagination of the dreamy, the rich and the adventurous. Here is a cast of characters that by living or visiting Kenya have left their imprint in this African country.
| Karen Blixen. |
I had a farm in Africa. With this famous sentence, Baroness Karen Blixen, also known by her nom de plume, Isak Dinessen, started her best selling book Out of Africa, later transformed into a major motion picture (starring Meryl Streep). Karen Blixen spent 17 years of her life in Kenya. She was born in Denmark and came to Kenya in 1914, after marrying her Swedish cousin Baron Blixen. When her marriage failed (due to her husband's escapades) she took Finch Hutton as her lover (portrayed by Robert Redford in the film). She became ruined and had to sell all her possessions and return to her native Denmark, where she wrote the book that would project her to the hall of fame. Today there is a Karen Blixen museum in the Nairobi area named after her.
| Dennis Finch Hutton. |
Best known for being Karen Blixen's lover. A professional big game hunter, he started the tradition of hunting with style for his rich noble clients: silverware, porcelain, and classical music in magnificent tents. He was killed in an airplane crash, and was immortalized by his lover in Out of Africa.
| Queen Elisabeth II. |
Kenya was one of the colonies of the British Empire visited by Queen Elisabeth II in her honeymoon world tour in 1952. While at the Treetops, a famous lodge up in the luscious Aberdare National Park, the then Princess of Wales was informed of the death of her father, King George VI. Kenya had the honor to proclaim her queen in her soil.
| Ernest Hemmingway. |
The American Nobel Prize World Investment News Ltdr visited Kenya regularly, being a passionate big-game hunter. One of his partly autobiographical short story books, The Snows of the Kilimanjaro reflects his knowledge of the Kenyan bush. He was also very keen in deep-sea fishing (as reflected in his master piece The Old Man and the Sea) and was often seen fishing huge black marlins off the coast of Watamu, near Mombasa, in the Indian Ocean.
| The Earl of Erroll. |
Josslyn V. Hay, Earl of Erroll and High Constable of Scotland was murdered under very suspicious circumstances in 1941. His death made headlines all over the world. He was considered to be the leader of the Happy Valley crowd, a bunch of upper class fugitive aristocrats notorious for their devious sexual escapades. A well-known womanizer, he had seduced Diana Caldwell, the attractive young wife of Sir Jock Broughton. After their elopment, Sir Broughton had finally accepted his defeat and toasted with champagne wishing them happiness. That very same night Joss Hay was found in the outskirts of Nairobi with a bullet in his head. Sir Broughton was acquitted and his murderer was never found. James Fox immortalized this passionate crime in his 1982 book White Mischief, later turned into a motion picture.
| | Joy Adamson. |
Austrian author of Born Free, the true story of the lioness Elsa. Found abandoned when she was just a cub, Elsa was raised by Joy and her husband George until she was an adult. They finally decided to set her back free. Her book depicts the pains and joys of teaching the lioness to find for herself and the dramatic moment of their separation. The book became a success and was then transformed into a motion picture and finally into a TV series in the 1970s. Joy Adamson was later commissioned by the Kenyan government to make a series of excellent watercolor portraits of the different Kenyan tribes and customs. Today they have become an invaluable anthropological document and can be observed at the Nairobi National Museum.
| Richard Leaky. |
Dr. Leaky, has been recently appointed as Head of the Kenyan Civil Service, carrying out wiping reforms to bring the country back to its past economic splendor. He is best known for having been the Director of the Kenya Wild Service, where his reforms and strict measures (animal poachers received death penalties) saw a revival of previously endangered species such as the elephant or the white rhino. But few people know that this white Kenyan is a reputable paleoanthropologist. He discovered together with his parents Louis and Mary some of the most ancient remains of hominids in the bed of Lake Turkana, in Northern Kenya, such as the Australopithecus Boisei and Homo Habilis, thus revolutionizing the knowledge of human origins forever.
| Theodore Roosevelt. |
The American president was a devoted hunter and visited Kenya on hunting Safaris, creating a deep interest on Kenya among rich North Americans at the turn of the century. |
