At the city bar in Kampala, Gene Ashby and I made our radical decision over drinks. It was better to teach Marine biology on the beach in Mombassa and the remnants of East African Colonialism across the road from Lord Delaware’s Plantation outside of Nairobi than to teach those subjects from books and pictures in our classrooms...

We thought it such a great idea that we petitioned old Porskitt, our Headmaster at Kyambogo Teacher Training College to allow us to go on a field trip with forty students, males and females, by bus to Mombassa.

 We thought he would ‘freak out’. But as he gazed at us through those thick eyeglasses; his eyes became gleeful and young. Instead of rejecting us he said “That’s the spirit we need around here...” He helped us plan the trip by calling headmasters at other schools to feed our students and put us up for the night when we passed through their area.

We secured a bus and two drivers. For further security one of us drove my old beat up Datsun in case we had bus trouble and needed to go to the nearest town for a mechanic.

At the end of term, our field trip began with a first stop at the Owen Falls Dam at Jinja.  We toured the Sugar and Cement factory with Teacher Trainees who were twenty to twenty five years old, disciplined and self controlled.  Some were married, but most of them had never before traveled this far outside their communities.

From there we hastened over a smooth tarmac road to Tororo Girl’s School near the Kenyan border where we spent our first night’s lodging.  

We crossed into Kenya in the early morning. The bus droned on, passing white and black rhinoceroses. Among the flat-topped mimosa we caught glimpses of reticulated giraffes. We made good time; soon we passed Eldoret and by late afternoon we were approaching Nakuru.

Our women students decorated their half of the bus with silks and colorful scarves. Odors of perfumes and powders drifted from it through the rest of the bus.

This was a talented group of Trainees. With this leisure of travel, they showed many sides of creativity. Some were phenomenal musicians on drums or stringed lyres. Others drew or painted pictures and hung them throughout the bus. Several took on the task of writing a journal of our field trip. At intervals, they read portions of their compositions to the rapt attention of the whole group.

We arrived early evening near the Alkaline Lake Nakuru and I saw white birds sitting as if on tables in the foliage of green flat topped trees. Many grebes, cranes, nightjars, yellow noisy weaver birds, many kinds of starlings flew up in droves, whirling and wheeling around in the blue sky above the trees and hills; very eye-catching and interesting.

But nothing rivaled the myriad droves of pink and red flamingoes feeding and ruffling up and down on the shores and even middle parts of the lake.

The Flamingoes flew up, marched along the lake ends, fed in the shallows, standing erect, their beaks on their long necks upside down, siphoning and filtering food into their bodies. All the while their feathers ruffled displaying the fuchsia and red plumage fueled by the algae and shrimp they ate from this alkaline lake water.

 We spent the night at a secondary school near Lake Nakuru. Then quickly, in the morning, packed and boarded our bus with sleep still in our eyes. We passed on a hill overlooking the lake. The moaning drone of our bus motor disturbing their nesting frightened the flamingoes to rise up in flocks.

Soft whispering waves of Flamingoes, flaring wings floating upward from Lake Nakuru, through sparse green tree tresses in the early morning mist, looked like a sparkling pink veil floating in the sky over our yellow bus.

The scenery captured our eyes. Books, magazines and newspapers, lay about, but not many were opened. I remember many titles: Weep Not Child, Living in the Village of Ghosts, Things Fall Apart, Gone with the Wind- it lying on a poster that read: “When Elephants Fight it is the Grass that Suffers.” next to,  Cry the Beloved Country, Great Expectations , The American Constitution, Tom Brown’s School Days. 

From here the bus raced around curve after curve and up and down hill. Relaxing students slept or swayed up and down the aisles with the moving, droning bus, visiting with each other in their seats, laughing, exchanging jokes.

 The drivers, good humored and cooperative, knew the road and good naturedly coaxed us to stop at outdoor cafes that had food, beer, soft drinks and latrines.

When we passed one town by there was soon another, with roads always crowded with people headed to the next nearest town, loaded with baskets of maize, cassava, bananas, pineapples, sorghum, gourds of honey; there were  bicycles loaded with sacks of beans or a person, a woman or child perched on the back carriage seat or riding in the handlebars of the bicycle or a motor scooter. No matter where we passed in the afternoon there were these crowds headed back in the opposite directions.

Then five miles before we reached Nairobi, our luck changed; we had punctures; in two rear tires. Gene Ashby, Latria  Semakula, the women student’s matron and I held a brief staff meeting in the Datsun.

I was in charge of discipline so in the end I was stuck with the bus. Gene loved to drink so it was best he went with the drivers for mechanics and supervised some of the Trainees who wanted to hike or hitch rides into Nairobi. He drove some students in our Datsun; others hiked or caught local buses and taxis to town to see the sights of Nairobi, promising to meet up with Gene in the Post Office.

            I stayed with Latria and most of the girls until the drivers and the garage repairmen came. They slowly, but expertly, in about six hours, repaired our bus tires.

When Gene and the last of the students finally dribbled back, we went to our host school in the hills above Nairobi.

When we arrived the young students there were having a dance and no one wanted to go to bed. But we were up in the hills in a school, a good distance from town where people were dancing in the bright lighted bars of Nairobi where our students really wanted to be. But after a while they all began dancing, having fun right there. 

Early the next morning we went through Nairobi without stopping after Gene promised the students he would bring them back. It was early afternoon when our bus reached the outskirts of Mombassa. The drivers pulled to the side out of traffic to give the Trainees a view of the entry. Cameras clicked amid students’ shouts, expressed excitement and joy when they saw the four big tusks that marked the entrance to Mombassa.

Students became impatient as our drivers searched for our school quarters along the length of spacious beaches. After being attracted by the many tourist hotels and camps along the beautiful white sandy beach, we finally located our school, unloaded our bags and wearing skimpy shorts and barefooted headed for the beach. We all gathered there happily dipping our toes into warm ocean water.

I expected the students to don bathing suits and head for the water.  But only Mudede and Geld Patel and several others dove in and swam a ways out shouting and throwing handfuls of water toward those on the beach who were not enticed to join them.   Others walked along the sandy beach, sat under palm trees, joked about the many crabs, especially the hermit crabs which they collected, observed and called  ‘homeless’ ones because  they were always searching for a new home.

Only four students were keen to learn goggling and snorkeling so we found the beach rental kiosk and rented equipment. All we could do that first evening was get used to the process of putting on the equipment. The students spat out the salt water. We could not collect any specimens for we had neither container nor preservative.

The next morning I took the four students who wanted to snorkel and collect with me in the Datsun into Mombassa town to find a chemical warehouse where we bought formaldehyde and a Large 100 Gallon Garbage can type Plastic container to hold our specimens. I ordered ready made preservative in gallon jugs. That was easy as I learned there were “collectors” operating along the beach, securing specimens for biological supply houses in England and Germany.

On our first day of collecting a young German University student on holiday collecting specimens popped out of the water near us in goggles and a snorkeling outfit with a plastic collecting bag slung over his shoulder. He soon made friends with my crew, pointing out a small fish with spines he told us to take care not to touch or step on it for it was poisonous. He told us that he was working with his father during holidays collecting specimens for sale to a laboratory back home in Frankfurt, Germany.

I combed the beach every low tide for specimens and shells and made notes about them. While collecting with students I taught them and made notes of their questions that I planned to include in my lessons back at the college.

Our German University student joined us frequently and was very useful in sharing information about collecting. He informed us that there was no danger of sharks because the coral reef came up too high. As long as we did not venture out beyond the barrier, there was no danger. That information relieved the fears of other students who soon joined us in collecting or swimming out to look and write in note books. Our artists drew pictures daily.

Our group established a routine. While I goggled and snorkeled with four and sometimes as many as 8 more of the Teacher/Trainees and the collector from Germany, Gene took field trips with a large cadre of Teacher Trainees as far as Nairobi, to Parliament to see Jomo Kenyatta and to see the big colonial plantations of Lord Delaware, the horse farms and the air field- He became all 'teacher' and told any listener that he was a Social Studies teacher back at the College and had finally thought how he  could enrich and enliven his courses.

And the students wanted to make sure they learned something of the colonial experience of Kenyans. Uganda was never a colony and was spared that colonial past. It was a Protectorate and so although during colonial times, before they became independent, England ruled, they ruled through the chiefs and kings they found already in Uganda.

With these established routines, we had meals in the school and on the beach and spent quiet evenings reading, writing, reflecting, cataloging and preserving our specimens. We met every evening to sight see, visiting the forts and historical sights along the beach.

Gradually students filled our collecting plastic container. More and more of our number cultivated visits to the beach. Mrs. Semakula had most of the girls in bathing suits, where they often frolicked in the water during the siesta period; a time when the beach was free of fishermen and collectors.

Our week slipped away day by fast-moving day.

Then it was gone and we left Mombassa with our collection utensil full and headed over the long road through Kenya.

 Leaving Mombassa behind us, Teacher/ Trainees slept, recounted their adventures, and quickly wrote in their journals, while going quickly past Nairobi stopping at our host schools on the way, but hurrying now back to Kyambogo University in Kampala.

We arrived on a quiet seemingly deserted campus late one night for school was still in holiday. It would be several weeks before, staff and students would savor our adventure as we reported it at a special assembly or taught our newly acquired knowledge at Kyambogo Teacher Training College to newly arrived students.

And now, still, today, years after, in a protected corner of the Science Laboratory at Kyambogo University, which was Kyambogo Teacher Training College, is a 100 gallon reinforced hard plastic container of marine animals and plants preserved in formaldehyde and alcohol: starfishes, octopus, crabs, oysters, clams, seaweeds, puffer fish, hermit crabs, limpets, sand fleas and algae- kelp- varied and sundry of marine specimens we collected on that field trip taken with forty Teacher- Trainees from Kyambogo to Mombassa.

This collection forms the physical lab parts of an introductory course in Marine Biology which the present Science staff offers to the landlocked Uganda Teacher/ Trainees... Social studies teaching is not much changed. The teachers still use maps and pictures but videos make lessons more interesting and up-to-date.