Skip to main content

Paxtu: Kenyan home and museum of Lord Baden-Powell




Lord Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell (1857-1941) was a British army officer, and the founder of the worldwide scouts association and the girl guides.

As an army officer, from 1876-1910, he served in India and Africa. In 1907 he held a demonstration camp called the Brownsea Island Scout Camp, and his book Scouting for Boys was published in 1908. When he left the army in 1910 he established the Boys Scouts Association. His sister Agnes formed the Girl Guides in 1912, in the year he married Olave St Clair Soames.

Baden-Powell retired in 1938, moving to Kenya. He moved to the town of Nyeri at the base of Mt Kenya where he died in 1941. He is buried at the St Peters Cemetery in Nyeri. Olave moved back to England in 1942, where she died in 1977. Her ashes are interred beside her husband. The Kenyan Government declared Baden-Powell’s grave a national monument.


The Scouts Association still continues, with Bear Grylls as its Chief Scout.  The Girl Guides Association is also still in existence. Its president is Sophie, Countess of Wessex, the wife of Prince Edward. The motto of both associations is ‘’be prepared.’’






















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).

Comments

  1. You have stated incorrectly that Valerie died. She is alive, but had to step down from the rule due to family illness. New chief guide now appointed, Jan 2018

    ReplyDelete
  2. My apologies. I have removed the statement. Thanks for passing on the information. Best, Martina

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pir-E-Kamil - The Perfect Mentor by Umera Ahmed: book review

The Perfect Mentor pbuh  (2011) is set in Lahore and Islamabad in Pakistan. The novel commences with Imama Mubeen in medical university. She wants to be an eye specialist. Her parents have arranged for her to marry her first cousin Asjad. Salar Sikander, her neighbour, is 18 years old with an IQ of 150+ and a photographic memory. He has long hair tied in a ponytail. He imbibes alcohol, treats women disrespectfully and is generally a “weird chap” and a rude, belligerent teenager. In the past three years he has tried to commit suicide three times. He tries again. Imama and her brother, Waseem, answer the servant’s call to help Salar. They stop the bleeding from his wrist and save his life. Imama and Asjad have been engaged for three years, because she wants to finish her studies first. Imama is really delaying her marriage to Asjad because she loves Jalal Ansar. She proposes to him and he says yes. But he knows his parents won’t agree, nor will Imama’s parents. That

Flaws in the Glass, a self-portrait by Patrick White: book review

The manuscript, Flaws in the Glass (1981), is Patrick Victor Martindale White’s autobiography. White, born in 1912 in England, migrated to Sydney, Australia, when he was six months old. For three years, at the age of 20, he studied French and German literature at King’s College at the University of Cambridge in England. Throughout his life, he published 12 novels. In 1957 he won the inaugural Miles Franklin Literary Award for Voss, published in 1956. In 1961, Riders in the Chariot became a best-seller, winning the Miles Franklin Literary Award. In 1973, he was the first Australian author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for The Eye of the Storm, despite many critics describing his works as ‘un-Australian’ and himself as ‘Australia’s most unreadable novelist.’ In 1979, The Twyborn Affair was short-listed for the Booker Prize, but he withdrew it from the competition to give younger writers the opportunity to win the award. His autobiography, Flaws in the Glass

The Beggars' Strike by Aminata Sow Fall: book review

The Beggar’sStrike (1979 in French and 1981 in English) is set in an unstated country in West Africa in a city known only as The Capital. Undoubtedly, Senegalese author Sow Fall writes of her own experiences. It was also encapsulated in the 2000 film, Battu , directed by Cheick Oumar Sissoko from Mali. Mour Ndiaye is the Director of the Department of Public Health and Hygiene, with the opportunity of a distinguished and coveted promotion to Vice-President of the Republic. Tourism has declined and the government blames the local beggars in The Capital. Ndiaye must rid the streets of beggars, according to a decree from the Minister. Ndiaye instructs his department to carry out weekly raids. One of the raids leads to the death of lame beggar, Madiabel, who ran into an oncoming vehicle as he tried to escape, leaving two wives and eight children. Soon after, another raid resulted in the death of the old well-loved, comic beggar Papa Gorgui Diop. Enough is enou