• Kenya and Nearby Countries
    1992 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses

    • Overland Across Half of Africa

      In 1935, the year when progressive Bible understanding revealed the ingathering of a great crowd to live in an earthly paradise, a team of four Witnesses undertook the third campaign into East Africa. They were Gray Smith, the survivor of the first campaign, and his wife, Olga, and the two Nisbet brothers, Robert and George. George had arrived in Cape Town during the month of March.b

      This time they were well equipped with two three-quarter-ton delivery vans fitted out as living quarters, complete with beds, kitchen, water supply, spare gasoline tank, and removable frames with screening for protection against mosquitoes. Now additional towns could be reached, although the roads were sometimes overgrown with grass up to ten feet [3 m] high. These pioneers often slept out in the wild and could see, hear, and feel the throbbing heartbeat of Africa, with its wide horizons and abundance of wildlife: lions roaring at night, and during the day, zebras, gazelles, and giraffes grazing peacefully​—along with the ominous presence of rhino and elephants.

      They motored along part of the Cape to Cairo Road. The reality behind this illustrious name was long, lonely stretches of dust as well as stony stretches broken by mudholes and soft sand and by rivers that had to be forded. Upon reaching Tanganyika, the four parted company. The Nisbet brothers headed for Nairobi, while Brother and Sister Smith concentrated on Tanganyika, which was then under British rule.

      Soon the police arrested the Smiths and ordered them to return to South Africa. Instead, following the Nisbet brothers, they headed north to Nairobi, where they were given permission to stay only after paying a refundable deposit of $160 to the local police. The pioneers worked hard, placing over 3,000 books and about 7,000 booklets along with many subscriptions for the Golden Age magazine. Eventually, mounting religious opposition led to deportation orders. After vigorous but futile protests against deportation, three of the pioneers began the journey back to South Africa, leaving Robert Nisbet, who was sick with typhoid fever, behind in a Nairobi hospital.