bridges over the river Kei

The article is the outcome of the author's long-standing interest in the number and variety of bridges that were built within a short section of the Great Kei River at Victoria Drift - in close proximity to the village of Komgha - over a 100-year period. The particular bridges under scrutiny - with their dates of construction - are as follows: Temporary Military Bridge, 1877 (no longer extant) Lattice Girder Wagon Bridge, 1879 Timber Railway Bridge, 1905 (only foundations remaining) Relocated Lattice Girder Railway Bridge, 1948 N2 SANRAL Concrete Bridge, 1977.

Obituary: Merwynne Twentyman Jones

One of this area’s most enthusiastic amateur genealogists and historians was lost to us when Merwynne Twentyman Jones died peacefully at Damant Lodge on 10 February 2021, aged 85.

Trauma and slavery, Gilo and the soft, subtle shackles of Lovedale

A recent study of sixty-four Oromo slave children from the Horn of Africa has provided valuable information of the children’s experiences from capture to the coast. In 1888 a British warship liberated a consignment of Oromo child slaves in the Red Sea and took them to Aden. A year later, a further group of liberated Oromo slave children joined them at a Free Church of Scotland mission at Sheikh Othman, just north of Aden. Two of the missionaries learnt Afaan Oromo (the children’s language), and, with the assistance of three fluent Afaan Oromo speakers, they conducted structured interviews with each child asking for details of their experiences of their first passage i.e. the journey from cradle to the Red Sea coast. When a number of the children died within a short space of time, the missionaries had to find another institution with a healthier climate to prevent further deaths. They decided to ship the Oromo children to the Lovedale Institution in the Eastern Cape, South Africa.