Ewart Scott Grogan: 50th anniversary of the British explorer

This week is the 50^th anniversary of the death of British explorer Ewart Scott Grogan.

Ewart Scott Grogan (1874–1967) was an English explorer, politician, and entrepreneur. He was the first person to walk the length of Africa, from Cape Town in South Africa to Cairo in Egypt. He was 24 years old when he started, reaching Cairo in 1900, two-and-a-half years later.

He was expelled from both school and university, and fell in love with Gertrude Watt, the sister of a Cambridge classmate. Her stepfather disapproved of Grogan, sow when Grogan proposed the Cape-to-Cairo journey, Gertrude’s stepfather agreed that this would be a suitable test of his character and seriousness.

During his trek, which he wrote about in From the Cape to Cairo; the first traverse of Africa from south to north (1902), he was stalked by wild animals and plagued by parasites and fevers. For his efforts, he was allowed to marry Gertrude.

Most of his life was spent in east Africa, mainly in Kenya where he settled. He built his Chiromo house and the Torrs Hotel in Nairobi. He was also a proprietor, with Lord Delamere, of the East African Standard newspaper. He established the Gertrude's Garden Children's Hospital in Nairobi in 1947, in memory of his wife after her death in 1943. There are now seven GGC hospitals in Nairobi.

He died in South Africa on 16 August 1967 at the age of 92.

I’m staying in the Grogan suite in the hotel, Hemingways Nairobi.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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