Mona Dunlop 2

I do have one photograph of me with my godmother, Mona Dunlop. The caption in the photo album states 'Loresho with Mona'. In those days Loresho was a small town to the northwest of Nairobi and I only knew about it as it had a school, the Loresho Convent, to which some of the Mombasa girls went after they had finished at the Mombasa European Primary School.

I can date this visit. In her 'Life' my mother wrote, "At some stage during our time in Mombasa, and before Jonathan went to boarding school, we all went up to Nairobi to stay at Loresho with Mona Dunlop." So this was some time probably between 1951 and the end of 1953.

My parents visited her again. "We had local leave around this time in the Cliffe Avenue House and decided to go up to Nairobi to stay with Mona Dunlop who by now was running an hotel in what had been the home of the Delameres."

My mother's last entry relating to Mona Dunlop reads, "I flew up with Jonathan to put him on the home bound plane and we spent a night again in the Norfolk Hotel. We asked Mona Dunlop, Jonathan's godmother, to come and have lunch with us. She was very nervy and het up over the tension over Mau Mau, and came with a gun strapped to her waist. I saw Jonathan off early the next morning, and thought about asking Mona for lunch or trying to get out to her, but decided against this and caught the evening train back to Mombasa. Mona had asked me to see if we could get her a trip on a ship down to South Africa as she felt she must get away from Nairobi. Dad said he would find out about ships but the next day I was telephoned by a businessman in Mombasa who was a friend of Mona's to say that she was dead. She had slept heavily that day I was in Nairobi, got up late in the evening, and it was thought she had taken a dose of something by mistake, fell asleep and never woke again. I was very sad as we had been good friends and I always regret that I didn't get in touch with her again that last day in Nairobi and invite her down to Mombasa to stay with us until she could get a passage south. She left everything to the Greek in Rallis."

Mona Dunlop seems to have had a varied career, and the reference to 'the Greek' is intriguing. I do wonder what would have happened to me if, early in my life, my parents had died and Mona had volunteered to bring me up!