Where Barack Obama’s grandpa was a cook and Jeff Koinange played hopscotch

Hospital Hill  School, Nairobi

Hospital Hill School in Nairobi was founded by an Ismaili and his wife after their children were denied admission in European schools in 1949.

John Karmali, a pharmacist-cum-photographer and his British wife Joan, founded our first multi-racial school from their living room even as British parents shunned it, claiming Africans and Indians lowered its standards. But colonial governor Sir Evelyn Baring gave the Karmalis land along Hospital Hill Road (State House Road) and his baby grew before moving to Parklands in the 1960s.