Sunday, June 21, 2015

Joan Pawsey Shoucair - An English Woman in the 20th Century Vortex of Change....Part 5

by Glenn N. Holliman




Joan in Africa....

Below, Christmas Day 2013 in UpperOddington, Gloustershire, England, Joan Shoucair, right, celebrates the holiday with friend, Barbara Holliman, left, of Pennsylvania, U.S.A., this writer's wife. One of the riches of Joan's long life is the ability to continue to develop friendships as the years pass. The Hollimans and Joan met on a river cruise in 2012.

Our continuing story of Joan's fascinating life picks up in the summer of 1927, when she and her mother, Elsie Pawsey, arrived in Uganda where her father, Henry 'Bert' Pawsey, had taken employment for a fruit company.

During the European 'Great Scramble' for African colonies in the second half of the 19th Century, U.K. business interests had begun to interact with various indigenous tribal units in the interior of the great continent, south of Sudan, in an area soon known as Uganda.  The country takes its name from the Buganda kingdom, which encompasses the southern portion of the county.  Ruled as a British protectorate, Uganda gained its independence in October 1962.


Below, circa 1930, 'Bert' Pawsey stands in front of the family home in Kampala, Uganda.  Note he is wearing a business suit with a sun helmet perched on his head.  As Noel Coward wrote in his song, only 'mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the mid day sun'!  The Equator runs through Uganda.


The interior of their Kampala home with its comfortable arm chairs and numerous flowers could have been in England.  The small plush armchair in the background was little Joan's.
Below, in the front of their home, was an expansive lawn and fields overlooking in the distance the magnificent Lake Victoria.

Next more photographs and biography of the fascinating life of Joan Shoucair....


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