COVER N. 696 / POSTCARD 696 - KENYA

Postmark: (?) Kenya 28.10.2024

Posted on the 28 October 2024;  Received on the 17th March 2026

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Talk about snail mail.... in our age of fast and furious these two postal pieces are really exemplary of what written communication used to be when distances had to be braved by other means than the flow of electrons along an optical fibre cable....

Thank you so much, Ravi. I was really pleased to get these, for I don't get that much Kenyan mail in my letterbox and also because the duration of their journey (since it took so long, who knows what they have been through) somehow bestows on them an aura of accomplishment that  fast international priority mail certainly lacks.

And then there's the image on the postcard, that balloon, against  the quintessential stereotype of the African sunset... I almost expect Mery Streep posing as Karen Blixen to wave Hello, from the gondola..😀

According to the date on the postmark, both the letter and the card were posted the same day.

Five hundred and six days, or sixteen months and twenty-one days, that is how long it took for the roughly six thousand, five hundred kilometres, as the bird flies, between Nairobi and Lisboa to be conquered... if only paper could talk.....I am sure that there has to be an interesting story lying there somewhere.....

Several postal administrations celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Birth of Mahatma Gandhi,  who was born on 2 October 1869 in Porbandar, in what was then the Porbandar princely state, now part of the Gujarat State, one of the 28 such administrative divisions of the Republic of India.

The Postal Corporation of Kenya was one such case, having issued, on 02OCT2020. the two stamp set (30 and 110 Kenyan Shillings) Ravi used on the cover 

Of note is the fact that stamps are illustrated  with the same iconic image of Gandhi dressed in his usual very humble clothes - nothing more than a dhoti (a loincloth) and a shawl, which he is holding in his right hand while the left holds a walking stick, known as a lathi.

On the 100 shilling stamp the image is either superimposed or simply colourised on an original black and white photograph of Gandhi leading a crowd, while his figure was isolated for the 20 Shilling stamp.

On the card Ravi also used a stamp from a 3 x 50 Shilling set issued on 10May2018 illustrated with photographs of the last existing three northern white rhinos - Sudan, a male, and Najin and Fatu, females.

At the time of issue though, Sudan had already died, having been euthanized in March 2018,  but the two female rhinos still persist at Ol Pejeta Conservancy  where they are under surveillance 24/7 and it is hoped that a new calf may be born in 2028, following artificial insemination with sperm collected from Sudan.