ABSTRACT
The history of the Wellcome Trust in Kenya is as old as the history of independent Kenya itself because its presence in Kenya was established in 1964 within a year of Kenya’s independence. And within ten years of its presence, I became the first Kenyan professional to be employed by the Wellcome Trust Research Laboratories in 1974 here in Kenya. I received my first pay cheque from them. It was a monthly salary of 2,232 KES. I remember then they were writing out the numbers – two thousand, two hundred and thirty-two. There was no automation of cheques. You only rip and write on top of it. They had a clumsy lady administrator who was also white and she wrote the cheques out by hand. Yes. And out of that we created a relationship between KEMRI and the Wellcome Trust following the establishment of KEMRI.
