Brian Hodgson

Vines were introduced into Tanzania by the Holy Ghost Fathers near Kondoa

Shortly before the end of my first three-year tour of service, Brian Hodgson called me into his office, and said with a grin that he had a job for me that he thought I would enjoy. How right he was. Apparently the provincial commissioner of Lake Province, one 'Fanny' Walden at that time, was disturbed by reports of large numbers of Masai grazing their cattle on the Lake Province sector of the Serengeti. He wanted a rough census of the Masai cattle carried out, and Hodgson had suggested that I be told to do the job. I was to be assisted by Peter Bramwall, who was game ranger at Banagi, and Peter Venter, a stock theft prevention officer from Arusha.

The district commissioner [at Moshi] was Brian Hodgson, under whom I had worked at Musoma. ...

I was invited to attend regular meetings of the predominantly Euro-Asian Arusha Chamber of Commerce and Agriculture and had a particularly fruitful relationship with its director, Mr Dick Alkin.

Robin Thorne, from whom I had taken over Handeni district in 1951, was DC Arusha when I arrived and, to my delight, I found that Paul Digges La Touche had been promoted to assistant commissioner of police for the Northern Province.

On Chagga Day, the anniversary of the mangi mkuu's installation, the police band at Moshi played the Eton Boating Song in honour of their old Etonian DC, Brian Hodgson, whom I had first met at Tabora. All the guests were then treated to an open-air banquet of kidari (breast of goat, a Chagga delicacy).