John Welford

Road to Nakuru

This memoir is a story that revolves around a town in Kenya's Rift Valley Province, called Nakuru. It is a history of my ancestors and of dislocation, recovery, murder and adventure in England, Scotland and Africa from about 1745 to 1971. The story tells of my remarkable parents, Spencer ("Spen") and Peggy Welford who first met in interesting circumstances in Nairobi in December, 1943. It outlines their lightning romance and marriage and their stories before, during and after World War II. They were demobilised from their wartime military service in England, in November 1945. My mother told us about a memorable "6 months Pub Crawl" (her words) that they went on, through England and Scotland in 1946. They returned to Kenya via a river cruise up the River Nile to a port called Jinja, in Uganda, from where they returned to Spen's home in Kenya, by rail. I was born in October of that year. The opening describes a frightening childhood journey to Nakuru in the time of the Mau Mau rebellion in late 1952. Shortly after, another childhood journey took my younger brother, Geoff, and me six thousand mile north, to England, without our parents, where we stayed for four years with our Grandmother, Elizabeth, and my father's sister, Alice, in a small fishing village. It was a wonderful time for me and I learned a great deal, in two schools beside the River Exe. Spen died in Nakuru in 1971. He was 62 years old. A postscript tells what happened to the rest of his family after that. Peggy died in Ballarat, Australia, the day before my birthday in 2003. She had recently turned 90.