大象传媒

Mr. Ruparelia was interviewed in Belgrave Library by Sneha and Jamina. It has been added to the Website with his permission. He understands the Terms and Conditions of the website.

The personal account of a gentleman, who was in Kenya, Mombasa during the Second World War.

We spoke to Mr Pravin Ruparelia. He was born on the 1st May 1939 in Kenya, Mombasa just when the Second World War started.

His father was a night guard, and he vividly remembers what his uniform looked like, he described it as khaki coloured and he had a Red Cross on his hand, which indicated he was part of the night guard society. He has four brothers and three sisters, who were born after the war, so obviously they wouldn鈥檛 remember anything about the war. His Mother was just and ordinary housewife. He said that his family were not really interested in the war and not a lot of them took part in the war.

Mombasa has an extremely hot climate all year round and this enables them to grow their own food, so they had plenty of food and he recalls that they never ran out of food, which means there was no rationing.

He remembers vividly about the blackouts, and he said that it usually happened after 6pm after everybody had gone home from work, and if they didn鈥檛 cover their windows then they got a fine from the police.

He also remembers about the trenches, and recalls helping the local people in making them. He said that there were an awful lot of sandbags used in the production of making trenches.

He also recalls about the post, that it wasn鈥檛 safe and very risky. This is because people in other countries might be sending dangerous parcels or letters, so the people that worked for the post had to check every letter or parcel, and if they found anything that looked suspicious they opened it, to check it.

Transportation was very risky as well, as he recalls. People didn鈥檛 want to sail in boats or ships, because it was very dangerous as there were lots of bombings in the sea. People also didn鈥檛 want fly in planes, because it was dangerous and very risky but most importantly extremely expensive at that time, as they were newly invented.

When the War finished, he was just 6 years old, and he recalls his family making special celebration meal, and therefore they were extremely happy and overjoyed.

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