Karen
Leafy suburb of coffee-farm origins, at the foot of the Ngong Hills, named for a Danish baroness.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Karen, a Nairobi suburb at the foot of the Ngong Hills, opens with Denys Finch Hatton's biplane crash at Voi airfield on May 14, 1931, then rewinds to the Danish baroness who ran the farmhouse nearby. She came to Kenya in 1914 and planted coffee at an altitude the crop could barely survive, weathering a factory fire, failed harvests and a collapsed marriage. Through the 1920s, what kept her going, by her own account, was Finch Hatton's low flyovers and late-night talk of poetry.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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