Taitas were the first Kenyans to see a plane

During World War I, Kenya was a British territory, while Tanzania was German territory and Taveta became a battlefield with the airstrip as an important stopover for military planes out for surveillance of Germans camping at the nearby Salaita Hill.

Printing in Kenya started in Taita-Taveta County, where the Taveta Chronicle was the country’s first newspaper in 1895. According to James Willson in his 2014 book, The Guerrillas of Tsavo, the newspaper was founded by the Church Mission Society stationed at Mahoo, near Taveta, also the home of the first airstrip at Maktau in Mwatate sub-county in 1915, a year after the outbreak of World War I.

“Taveta Chronicle was the first periodical published on the East Africa mainland. Those that followed were the weekly East African and Ugandan Mail and the fortnightly official Gazette of East Africa, published in 1899,” he notes, adding that the African Standard followed in 1902 to serve Indian civil servants, the business community and colonialists.
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