A far from single-handed effort was the knitting of blankets for the school. The colorful blankets are made from squares of knitting – six squares across and eleven down make one blanket. Gilgil area has made this their special "bee" but surely the record for squares must be that of the two hundred knitted by Mrs. Bill Dew!

 

Wool was also purchased for distribution to the school itself so that pupils could knit squares thus helping those who helped them. In the end sixty-nine beds were covered with lovely and enduring blankets and the knitting still goes on. The Lady Ann Marsham, who later moved to England, continued to knit for the school and contributions were received from the pupils of Kate Dunne's School and the well-known Bedales, both in the UK. The beginning of the decade had Naivasha sponsoring one deaf child and the end saw five children.

 

Carol’s singing continued to give fun, raise money and sometimes comforts lonely people. Jill Simpson remembered back “… mothers, children, pick-ups, torches, hymn sheets, scampering children darting around in the dark from house to house; giving the Christmas spirit to possibly lonely folk; older children carefully lifting younger ones into the transport; someone to count heads and on to the last stop where supper was waiting.”

 

Inspired by Mrs. Mary Johnson and Mrs. Rita Goldhill Naivasha entertained lonely British sailors over the Christmas periods. Again it was Jill who provided the memories “the panic while waiting for four to six men to arrive in a taxi. What have I done! What if they are mad keen to party all night? Will they want to see birds, feathered ones? What do we do with them?”

 

'Then they came, bags sorted, driver promising to pick them up in four days time. For years it was a great success; they hung Christmas decorations (never there to take them down of course and where a strapping young sailor can climb there are those of us who can't). Finally back to the taxi and to Mary in Nairobi for sending back to Mombasa. Wonderful letters from them, their wives and mothers.'

 

And finally the biggest laugh of the eighties – IN RETROSPECT. As everyone knows a Council meeting is held once a year out of Nairobi. I quote from Jill Hirst's report on one of the years Naivasha had the honor. “I still have to chuckle over that ghastly Up-country Meeting when the D.O. wanted to arrest all 150 members present, including our National Chairman and her committee. Billy (Nightingale) smoothed them over, but I don't think she could have been quite so charming had she known the horrors that were going on in the kitchen. The hotel management had decided at the last moment that they were not going to feed us after all and we had to start to do it ourselves. First the Kenwood Mixing Bowl blew up and about ten pints of cream swooshed across the kitchen at high speed covering us all – then the sink fell off the wall! There was no cutlery, china or glassware and we had people shooting off to all comers of Naivasha collecting these things and food for the cold buffet. The final straw was when it started to rain and the roof leaked like a sieve… muddy water pouring steadily into your plastic beaker full of warm gin and tonic. It says much for the EAWL as a whole that our guests drove off saying what a lovely time they had had and stoutly denying any knowledge of panic or confusion.'

J.H