Sports Days

Tony Chetham seems to have an inexhaustible supply of mementoes of MEPS sporting events dated back to the 1950s and 60s. This is a report from the Mombasa Times on the 1950 Sports Day which raised the princely sum of just over 173 shillings for the EASPCA, the local equivalent of our RSPCA.

One spectator at the event was a Mrs Katherine Bibby who was so taken with it that she wrote to the head, Mrs Foat, congratulating her on "the excellence discipline displayed by the children, and the splendid organisation of the whole proceeding."

The date of this picture isn't certain but it shows Mike Chetham announcing the results while....

....this clipping from the Mombasa Times is of the sports in September 1957. The results were Livingstone 103, Wavell 82, Mackinnon, 78. This was Livingstone's first cup win. Martin Wilson and Susan Cottenham received the Cup from Provincial Education Officer A V Hatfield.

MEPS pupils travelled to Arusha to take part in a swimming gala in 1962.

All clippings courtesy Tony Chetham.

Sports Day 1952

Tony Chetham has kindly sent in this cover from the programme for Sports Day 1952 and has highlighted that my mother was involved with the teas. This is no surprise - my mother was a great one for becoming involved in events and good works - so....

....this grainy picture, of my father at one of the MEPS sports days, is far more unusual. He preferred to spend his leisure moments propping up the bar with his friends at the Sports Club.

Sports Day 1953

Pictures from Jill Hayden, nee Parris:

Sports Day 1953 was on 27th June and was the first to feature the new houses. Picture shows the three house captains, Martin Attwood of Mackinnon, left, Tom Illidge of Wavell, centre, and Jill Parris of Livingstone, right. The winners were Mackinnon, with 177 points, followed by Wavell, with 115 points, and Livingstone, with 84 points.

Mrs Kennaway, wife of the Provincial Commissioner, presented the prizes. Individual prizes were for Shs 7/50, Shs 5/- and Shs 3/-, redeemable at Mombasa Times Ltd or at Badruddin’s Sports Store in Salim Road.

At the end of proceedings, Mrs Kennaway was presented with a bouquet by Livingstone captain, Jill Parris.

Left Swinging in a Baobab

From Christine Nicholls, née Metcalfe:

My father, C.J. Metcalfe, was the headmaster of MEPs. In the evenings we were press-ganged into helping to raise funds for a school hall at the primary school, at various events or at cocktail parties in our house, which were torture for my naturally shy mother.

At a fund-raising dance for the school my father, Revd Jupp, and another notable did a skit on the three witches from Macbeth. Jupp, as one of the witches, was to swing Tarzan-like from a baobab tree down to the cauldron. A rope was attached to his waist, looped over a branch, and held by my father, who was going to let him down gently. He proved to be too heavy and fell down fast, landing flat on his back. My father, still loyally clutching the rope, was hoisted high into the baobab and left swinging. This caused hilarity among the schoolchildren, who tied the rope to the tree and left him there, though only for a while because his wrath was mighty.

Christine's book, A Kenya Childhood, is available from Amazon - link here.

Boxing at MEPS

From Tony Chetham:

In October 1953 boxing classes started under Mr Rifkin. After Mr CJ Metcalfe became Head, Max Cable resurrected boxing which proved popular. For one of the boxing tournaments MEPS hosted 'upcountry’ schoolboys. My opponent was from Eldoret Primary School & we accommodated the lad at home. This was the case with all the other visiting schoolboys who travelled down on the NBO-MSA train accompanied by their teachers. It was a big event.

The local press seemed quick to pick up the stories. There are four clippings to read. Each is a .jpg file:

Story 1.     Story 2.     Story 3.     Story 4.

Jacks

Also on the MEPS Old Boys and Girls' website is an article about another popular game of the 1950s, jacks. The article was written by Jill Lake and she makes it sound as if only the girls played it - but we played it at the prep school I attended at that time, though we had less trouble buying the game.

The article is here.

Picture Creative Commons courtesy Children's Museum of Indianapolis, here.

Kingy, Photo Cards and NYABS

From Alasdair Drysdale:

In the late 1950s three major pastimes gained break-time ascendancy at MEPS and held the male pupils in thrall.

Kingtip, known generally as Kingy, was the first to be established. Players gathered on the football pitch and huddled in a circle to decide who was “It”. Whoever was “It” had the tennis ball and chased after the others, trying to hit them. When “It” had struck someone, there were then two “Its”.... but the game is more complicated than this.

Next came the collecting of aircraft photo cards, with information on the reverse sides. Post Toasties produced a glossy rectangular set of 50 and Will’s Gold Flake sweet cigarette packets included a large square set of 40. This led to some serious trading during break-times.

Then came the biggest craze.... nyabs. Nyabs was the MEPS name for marbles. This game involved a small cup-sized hole in the ground. A player started from behind a line typically a couple of yards away and if he got his marble into the hole he could flick it from there to hit one of his opponents’ marbles - and keep it. This is the simple game, but at MEPS it was.... more complicated.

Read all about the games in Alasdair's article on the MEPS website - link to .pdf here.

The Arab Chest

From Jon Haylett:

My father bought this Arab chest off a dhow in Zanzibar harbour some time in the early 1940s, before I was born. I have lost count of how many times it has moved house, first with my parents from Zanzibar to two houses in Dar-es-Salaam to four in Mombasa and then, when they retired, to at least six houses in the Hastings area and to one in Essex. When my mother died I inherited it, and it then moved with us - to Scotland and then to East Anglia. It's only recently that I have gone through it, and found some of the treasures it contains, amongst which....

....are some of my MEPS reports. This is the last one, dated December 1953, after which I left the school and, instead of moving with my peers to one of the boarding schools in Nairobi, went to school in England.

For thirty years of my life I was a teacher and had to fill out reports like this. Most of the comments are bland and unremarkable but my teacher, Mrs Dalgleish, put her finger on....

 ....one of the failings which would profoundly affect me through a long part of my life. She wrote, "Jonathon has gained confidence in his own capabilities...." Yes, Mrs Dalgleish, you were so right: for years my lack of self-confidence was a cross I had to bear.

One small aside. My name is Jonathan, not Jonathon. All my MEPS reports have the same error, and it was my father's fault. He registered me when we came to Mombasa in 1950 and, being the sort of lovely man he was, he didn't know how to spell his older son's name.