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.
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It was handed over to Nairobi City Council in 1973, the year Joan Karmali published, A School in Kenya: Hospital Hill 1949 – 1973.
Dr Julius Gikonyo Kiano, the first Kenyan PhD holder took his children there after becoming the first African lecturer at the University of Nairobi. There were no school for blacks in the 1950s.
Notable alumni guided by the motto “Aspire and Inspire” include President Uhuru Kenyatta’s sister Kristina Pratt and their niece Nana Gecaga, now MD at KIC and their cousin TV host Jeff Koinange, who played hopscotch on rough grounds. Nana’s father Udi Gecaga (see page 37) is another alumni, as was former Mwatate MP and Foreign Affairs minister Marsden Madoka and the late famous wildlife conservationist Michael Werikhe alias ‘Rhino Man.’
Jeff Koinange
Musician Wahu and Amolo Ng’weno who opened Kenya to the Internet via founding and later selling AfricaOnline, schooled at Hospital Hill School, as did Shereen Karmali, daughter of the founders and German actress Paula Schramm, daughter of Gordon Hagberg, an American who administered the famous ‘American educational airlifts’ that changed Kenya.
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The Hagbergs had a cook, Hussein Obama, whose grandson Barack Obama became US President after his father Barack Obama Snr missed the ‘airlifts.’
Other alumni include film producer Njeri Karago, Amani Mara Lodge founder Ashif Suleman and Liaquat Ahamed whose book, Lords of Finance, won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize
