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....

Joan Pawsey Shoucair - An English Woman in the 20th Century Vortex of Change....Part 3

by Glenn N. Holliman

We continue our series on the fascinating life of Joan Shoucair whose father was a colonial administrator in the Uganda Protectorate, and whose husband was a published photographer in post World War II Egypt.  Below, on her 92nd birthday, Joan shares memorabilia and pictures with the writer of this blog.  This photograph was taken in Upper Slaughter, Gloucestershire, U.K., Boxing Day 2013.

In an earlier article, we looked at the World War I experiences of Joan's father, Henry Herbert Pawsey, who entered the Great War as a private and emerged an officer.  Undoubtedly his gifts for administration and leadership emerged during the stress and destruction of the war in which so many of his contemporaries perished.

In 1919, Henry married Elsie Ward Newton ( the engagement picture of the couple below). After further service in France in 1919, he was discharged in 1920.  

 He took his young bride to his new civilian occupation as a salesman for the famous Liverpool, England department store, John Lewis (pictured below).  In Liverpool on 26 December 1921, their first and only child, Joan, was born.

 Undoubtedly,  looking for economic advancement, in 1926 Henry accepted a position with the Mengo Planters, Ltd, and was posted with this corporation to Uganda, a British Protectorate in East Africa. He would serve with this company and Uganda Stores in Kampala, the capitol, until 1940 when he joined British Colonial Service.

 

Passengers records indicate Henry "Bert" sailed September 1926 on the German ship, Wangoni, without this family, who would follow later.  The port city was Mombasa, Kenya.  From Mombasa, Henry would have taken the train to Kampala, Uganda on the shore of Lake Victoria.

The Wangoni was launched in 1921, 7,700 tons, by the Woemann Company, a German shipping firm from 1881 to 1941 that specialized in the African trade.  The German Navy requisitioned the Wangonia in World War II, and the ship finished her life as the USSR ship the Chukatka.

Next posting, Joan and Elsie join 'Bert' in Uganda....