crosspost from afrlabor@acuvax.acu.edu (not an H-NET list)
From: Carolyn A. Brown, Rutgers University
cbrown@zodiac.rutgers.edu
Date: Wed 12 Jun 1995
PROFESSOR GIDEON WERE IS KILLED IN ROAD ACCIDENT
Kenya has been hit by a spate of road accidents this week which have
killed 18 people, including the country's leading historian, Professor
Gideon Were.
Professor Were was among those killed in a road accident on the
Kericho-Kisumu road in which a cyclist died on the spot, but
Professor Were and another person died on arrival at Kericho
hospital. He was identified during a postmortem at the hospital. The
other dead were Samuel Kiprotich and Moses Baroda, a Ugandan.
Professor Were was travelling from Nairobi to Kisumu in a Peugeot.
Were was history Professor at the University of Nairobi until his
retirement in 1991 and wrote a number of books on the movement of
peoples on the African continent. His pioneer title was *A History
of Abaluyia of Western Kenya*, but among the most famous were the
widely used school textbooks *East Africa Through A Thousand Years*
and *A History of South Africa*.
Were 61, was born in Butere, Kakamega district and attended Kakamega
and Maseno High Schools before going to the then Royal Technical
College of East Africa in 1957. He obtained his doctorate from the
University of Nairobi history. He leaves a widow, five daughters
and two sons.