Royal Commonwealth Society : Molo camp

Allen, Annie Emma (1853-1942)

Royal Commonwealth Society

<p style='text-align: justify;'>In 1900 Annie Emma Allen (1853-1942) travelled to Uganda where she began her career as an honorary missionary with the Church Missionary Society. Allen documented her long and arduous journey by steamer, rail, bicycle, foot and sail in an album containing 66 atmospheric watercolours. They provide vivid impressions of the people and places she encountered. 1-8 portray the outward trip to Port Said; 9-19 show Sinai, the Red Sea and Aden; 20-25 were painted in Mombasa and Freretown; and 26-66 illustrate the trip to Lake Victoria. Allen would serve as a CMS missionary in Uganda for the next 25 years, teaching and working in hospitals and dispensaries, before retiring in 1926, at the age of 73.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Much of the missionaries’ journey was completed by bicycle until the roads became too rugged and rutted with waggon tracks to continue. On one occasion they so far outstripped their porters that they spent an uncomfortable night with little food in a borrowed tent, ‘Inside Boma (fort) where we spent the night of March 7 all five ladies (like sardines in a tin) in one small tent, lying on mule rugs. The two gentlemen sleeping outside, each side of the tent. This was when we rode thirty-one miles, and left the caravan miles behind.'</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>See Janus record <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=EAD%2FGBR%2F0115%2FRCMS%20158'>here</a></p>