Rasharasha, Tanganyika Territory, East Africa
Honor Anderson at Olduvai, early 1930s
When Frank, Honor and Patricia began their lives together again in Tanganyika Territory in 1925, they documented their progress, thereby initiating a rich source of archive material. Frank took photographs from the start, providing a record of their first home, ‘a shack’, and the first plantings of coffee seedlings.
By 1929, Patricia was attending boarding school in Nairobi, and she and her parents wrote regularly to each other. Their letters in both directions survive. From then on, family letter-writing was prodigious.
In the 1930s, Patricia attended school in England. During that time, Frank became an early pioneer of photographic safaris. The correspondence between father and daughter, along with Frank’s photographs, capture a picture of Africa on the cusp of change.
Later in the 1930s, Frank became heavily involved in the region’s politics, and his letters to Rasharasha from Dar-es-Salaam provide a rare insight into the ‘Colonial Crisis’ in the lead-up to World War II.
