---
category: "3"
changed: "2019-09-12T10:49:48.000Z"
comment_count: "0"
created: "2015-07-29T20:39:00.000Z"
featured_image: "1970_may_mike_in_boat_at_kerenga.jpg"
images: ["1973_06_tea_hotel_pool.jpg"]
ix: 27
nid: 41
original_author: "Jan"
path: "content/kericho-water-ski-ing"
title: "Kericho: Kerenga Dam"
type: "article"
uuid: "2bb143ba-8e17-4220-bba3-19351b3a1bf8"
---
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The largest ex-pat / European community in Kericho were mostly managers of the numerous tea estates surrounding the town, plus their families. In the 60s almost all the Tea Estate Managers were white and employed either by Brook Bond or the African Highlands Tea Company. Most of my peer group lived on tea estates, they went to school in the UK and came out to Kericho in the holidays. One or two tea estate managers had their own private swimming pool – like the Dickinson-Chethams, who sometimes held Sunday pool/lunch parties. Our social hub was the Sailing Club at Kerenga Dam (on one of the tea estates). We hung out there most Sundays, not actually sailing but water ski-ing; we being Edward, James and Bizzy Pickford, Vicky and John Turtle, Linda Bell and her sister and Vicky Hainsworth (who I was totally in awe of because she was a pupil at Harrogate Ladies College and we only saw her in the summer holiday)

I learned to water ski at about 14 and got quite good – I could even do slalom! Sometimes there were fun competitions, usually organised by Peter Freeman – the main man, boat driver and ski teacher (his Mum was my PE teacher at Kenya High), and if you couldn't use skis you could 'ski' on a large flat board, about the size and shape of a door, it could fit two people on it.

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My brother Mike also learned to ski but he found the water a bit too cold and often preferred to mess about on the edge of the dam with a small paddle boat. Kathy wasn't keen on the water either alhough she did come on the board with me a few times. She and her friend Dawn (Prophet) mostly played with their dolls . Mum and Dad either dropped us off or sat around chatting to other parents watching their children, there was also a bar and we usually took a picnic lunch. Occasionally on a Saturday night the Sailing Club hosted disco dances with Peter Freeman doubling up as the DJ.

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Kerenga dam wasn't very nice for swimming, the dark brown water was cold and very muddy underfoot, we prefered to actually swim at the Tea Hotel in Kericho town, only a short distance from our house.

After 1970 and with my baby son Nick we continued to visit Kericho and spend time at Kerenga dam or swimming at the Tea Hotel