Over time, little bits and pieces of family history got written down in response to requests from various quarters.

They have been collected here in a general grab-bag of stuff, and can be viewed via the following links:

• An article was written for a village newsletter in Holland about how my father ended up in Africa - it was written back in 1988, the author was unknown, and the article was wildly inaccurate. Subsequently I was contacted by the village Historian who asked me to help him set the record straight. This is the article that resulted - written partly in Frisian (the first paragraph) and the rest written in Dutch. A PDF file about a boy who left the village of Eestrum in Friesland and ended up in Africa

• I had a somewhat checkered and shortened military career where I was conscripted into one Regiment but was immediately transferred to serve in another A PDF file containing a short article I was asked to write for the Regimental Magazine of the Kenya Regiment.

• It took over half a century to pass since I had been trained in a new "profession", called at that time "Computing Machinery". Apparently a 50-year legal clock had expired allowing certain details about the background and circumstances my "education" to be made public. I was contacted by a "Curator of Archives" in the U.K. who asked me to provide an "oral history" about how certain events came about which evolved into an extended career in what is today called Silicon Valley. How a Kenya Policeman ended up in the Research & Development Division of an American super-computer company

Following are a few "chapters" I put together about how my Father came to end up in East Africa in the 1920's, how he then happened to marry my Mother even though they were separated bt 1000's of miles, and the subsequent arrival of my sister, the second world war, and me...

• Early Life Leaving school at minimum legal age, goes to the big city to find a job

• First Expedition Sent to explore Central Africa in search of King Solomon's Mines

• Second Expedition A Business Enterprise is set up in Uganda

• Marriage A close encounter with a Lion triggers formal engagement followed by marriage

• War World War II breaks out, and me and my sister arrive