Remembering Africanization: annotated transcript of staff reunion, Cambridge, Darwin College, 6 August 2013

(with thanks to Gisela Tuchtenhagen for filming, Andy Michaelis for sound recording and photography, and Francesca Raphaely for editorial assistance)²

Figure 1.

The 2013 reunion of old Amani scientists and technicians.

Photographs: Andy Michaelis.

Participants

Ms Vyvienne Attenburrow, born 1946: British laboratory technician who was in Amani from January 1972 to 1974. Although employed by the UK ODA, she emphasizes that she was seconded to the East African Community, and her salary paid by the Community (with a UK-paid supplement).

Dr Frances Bushrod, born 1947: British parasitologist and entomologist; worked in the 1970s with the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine; in Amani as a PhD student and researcher on Bancroftian filariasis from 1972 to 1978.

Dr Aleid Kortmann, born 1939: Dutch MD; in Amani from 1967 to the 1970s (first in Muheza Field Station, then at Amani itself), as accompanying wife of the late MD and researcher Henri Kortmann (born 1939).

Mr Daudi Lelijveld, born 1959: son of Ineka and Jan Lelijveld; raised in Amani with his brother Hubert and younger sister Carmen.

Mrs Ineka Lelijveld, born 1930: Dutch, wife of Dr Jan Lelijveld (see below); lived in Amani from 1966 to 1970.

Dr Jan Lelijveld, born 1929: Dutch MD, first non-British and last European Director of Amani; lived in Amani from 1966 to 1970.

Dr Hubert Lelijveld, born 1961: son of Ineka and Jan Lelijveld; raised in Amani; brought his daughter to the reunion.

Dr John Raybould, born 1935: British medical entomologist and blackfly expert; lived and worked in Amani from 1960 to 1976. He named his first daughter Benika Amani.

Dr Katsuko Raybould, born 1945: Japanese botanist and ecologist (‘plant sociologist’); lived and worked in Amani from 1969 to 1976, where she met John Raybould, her future husband.

Dr Alister Voller, born 1937: British immunologist, who obtained his PhD from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM); he lived and worked intermittently in Amani in 1970, 1971 and 1973, while based at the LSHTM, where he was a Reader at the time.

Mrs Eva Voller, born 1944: Swedish wife of Allister Voller; did not live in Amani, but named her first daughter Amani.

Dr Graham White, born 1941: British medical entomologist; who lived and worked in Amani from 1967 to 1972.

Mrs Dorothy Wilkes, born 1933: wife of Tony Wilkes; lived in Amani from 1958 to 1965 and later, during the 1980s, at Muheza field station.

Mr Tony Wilkes, born 1933: British entomologist, who lived and worked in Amani from 1958 to 1965 and later, during the 1980s, at Muheza field station.

Transcript

Wenzel Geissler:

Good afternoon. I am sorry to interrupt the […] train of your conversation. […] We wrote to you that we would have a ‘witness seminar’, which is a format that some historians use to collect voices of the past … well, you don’t look very much like voices of the past, so voices about the past. [chuckling and comments] [There have been] witness seminars run by the Wellcome Trust about colonial medicine³ […] that

Figure 2.

Amani and its field stations, Muheza, Tanga and Gonja/Pare, 1960. Source: East African Institute of Malaria and Vector-Borne Diseases Diseases (1960). Report on the Pare-Taveta Malaria Scheme 1954–59. Dar es Salaam, Government Printer, p. 2.

David Bradley⁴ organised with the forefathers of British science in Africa like Nelson⁵ and Garnham,⁶ and in a way ours is a follow-up on this. We know a lot about colonial medicine – so much that we can’t hear more about it – and we somehow know how things are done [in African medical science] today, but we don’t know anything about the transition. Few historians have studied the transition from colonial science to African science – the period that you called ‘Africanization’ in your time. And thus it is this ‘Africanization’ that interests us today. Our interest is not only...