Southern Highlands School Tanganyika

01/03/2025

Welcome David Snowden!

27/01/2025

27/01/2025

Keren's Memories of SHS:
The school, styled after an English prep school, was started to accommodate British children anticipated as a result of the failed ‘groundnut scheme’.

>l.

The above description of the scheme explains the isolation of the school site, about 20 miles as I recall from the nearest small township (? Was it John’s Corner or Iringa). This distance was a daunting thought when I lied in bed trying to work out how to run away.

The site was not so remote from Mufindi where my family settled first in Tanganyika, Pa working with Brooke Bond Company as their Medical Practitioner.

27/01/2025

Dear Christine and all
Thank you for the e-mail - most interesting and released a flood of memories for me, some good, some bad.
Yes, I remember Keren and it is lovely that she managed to make such a good life for herself; support for polio sufferers in those days was crude at the best and non-existent at worst so to work through that and be so successful makes a wonderful story.
I, too, remember bullying during my time at Southern Highlands and, as others note, often led by people who later become very successful in their lives. I know it impacted on me, the fact that I remember whole terms of misery 70 years later speaks for itself and I never did let my children go to a boarding school because of that time! However, a broader perspective is necessary, I think. There is little doubt in my mind that any boarding establishment of that era anywhere in the world would have had similar problems to a greater or less extent - I found it during my secondary schooling in the UK, though not so intense, and my sisters found it at the Kenya High School in Nairobi at the same time. It is all history now and, hopefully, provided lessons that helped improve the bullying situation in education over the years.
For balance, there were good times as well weren't there? Pea shooters carefully crafted from bamboo shoots that had to be the right bore to shoot eucalyptus seeds at each other - we never thought about blinding each other or swallowing them, who would at that age? Similarly, do you remember the puff adders that occasionally fell into the trench around the top of the bottom playing field - no thought of nature in those days, we killed them with stones!!
I will stop there,
Good wishes to everyone
John Spence

27/01/2025

Keren ascribes the establishment of SHS to the "Groundnut Scheme" which was active at Kongwa, near Dodoma, Nachingwea in the Southern Province near the port of Mtwara, which was built for it, and Urambo in Western Province west of Tabora.

However, the MAIN reason for setting up the school, and for its location in the Southern Highlands near Iringa was the "CHESHAM SCHEME",
promoted by its eponymous UK booster Lord Chesham, (the 4th Lord C I think), who tried to reproduce in Tanganyika a scheme to encourage "soldier-settlers" on the Kenya Colony model for officers demobbed from the post-war UK armed forces. You may remember a Brigadier Murray who was a regular visitor to school plays etc and several other ex-military men, who lived around the school.
Lord and Lady Chesham lived about 20 miles away from the school up the Iringa Road at their estate, which was called Rungemba, further along from the GHAUIs farm, which was also one of the places the school used to do trips to. Lord Cs house had UK stately home type family portraits in big gold frames. Lady R stayed on after Lord C's death and joined Nyerere's TANU PARTY and served as an MP for Iringa District in the first two Nyerere governments.
However, the scheme failed to attract many post-war soldiers as settlers, probably because Tanganyika was a League of Nations and then UN Trust Territory, not a COLONY, like Kenya, and so settlers could not buy land freehold, but only on leases, and quite short ones too. The Cheshams also built the Sao Hill Club up the hill from the school and adjacent to the Sao Hill aerodrome, which also served the tea estates at Mufindi and which was served once a week by the DC3 "Dakotas" of East African Airways from Dar.
Originally, Holland and Lycett built TWO schools about three miles apart, one on the side of the hill facing the Great North Road and the "donga" and John's Corner (our school, which was going to be all for boys) and the other up past the Top Playing Field the other side of the Mufindi Road, which was going to be the SHS Girls School. In the event, there were not enough parents, so the Girls School was never finished and the Boys School building
became Co-Ed.
Luv and Salaams, Barney GH

27/01/2025

Ref Keren's recollections:
(1) My recollection of the beds was that (at least at the Boys' End) they were made of WOOD with the mattress supported by raw cow-hide strips making a lattice pattern underneath. The mattresses were also locally made with stuffing from the "kapok tree", which produced a big pod with a sort of cottony fluff inside, and
common in the Northern Province of Tanganyika around Mombo and Korogwe. I believe the German settlers were responsible for planting them. Such beds were easily made by local fundis in Iringa town using the local mninga (African mahogany) hardwood, such as the PWD used to make all the basic "hard" furniture for government officers' houses. I recall this because I saw at least TWO of these beds being broken by excessive fighting on them by several boys' weight overloading them.
(2) I have no recollection of the school flying the Union Jack every day. There was a flag-pole in the gardens in front of the main central steps, but a flag was flown only on days such as EMPIRE DAY and the Queen's Official Birthday. I also think that there was a LAW, which stated that flags could ONLY be flown at District and Provincial Headquarters and Government House in Dar, and that flags could NOT be flown at private houses or businesses, so I think Keren's recollection here may be off.
(3) Penny B (now Hutton) is correct to say that Geoffrey Holland married Monica Wingate (NOT Hannah Daepp). However, a few years ago I got a query
about him from a woman in South Africa, seeking information about her FATHER. It seems that Geoffrey H got her mother in the family way in Dar-es-Salaam in the early 1950s, and her Mum was packed off to South Africa to have the baby and paid off so that she would not come back. I can't remember how she got hold of me,
but She told me that they had been unable to find a "Geoffrey Holland" in any of the UK databases. I was able to tell her that that was probably because, although he was known as "Geoffrey" Holland, his initials were T.G.R. so she should look for a TGR Holland at Malvern College, where TGRH went to school and also at Oxford
University. I also gave her Andrew Lycett's email, and I was able to tell her that old Mrs H had lived in Ireland, so possibly there was a birth record for him there. She
acknowledged that email, but I never heard from her again.
(4) I was very much the target of bullying when I was first at SHS. My nemesis was an older boy called JEREMY MACKENZIE, who ended up as a Lt General in the British Army and Commandant of the Chelsea Pensioner Retired Soldiers College in Chelsea. Fortunately JJ Mac left in about 1952/53, so my torment ended. (One of the reasons that I have always felt so GUILTY for not standing up for your brother when Blair Murray and the others "sent him to Coventry" in our
last term at SHS Jan to March 1956)
Luv and Salaams,
Barney GH

27/01/2025

Here again is the photo of the SHS dining room that Keren said did not come through. I got it from John Spence who got it from Anthony Craddock. I asked if Keren is the girl in the foreground, front left and whether her father was perhaps the photographer.
Abd looking at the photograph again, I think best friends Barney Hopkins and Peter Harris are facing us on the other table (Barney in the middle). Barney, can you confirm?

07/10/2022

A lovely visit with Ingrid Harris (that was!) we went through many photos and as she was a year ahead of me and could fill in more names.
Here we are holding up a drawing done by Barney Hopkins when he was a pupil at SHS.

17/09/2021

H/W 3 screen shots taken off the Google maps of SHS. (Lutheran Centre) Do they bring back any memories from inmates?? Let's record them here. Asanti sana