I am interested in following the trail that finally brought me to Milton Keynes, a city that is celebrating its 40th birthday this year. The story starts in Bal, in Jallandar in Punjab in India. My father Mohamed Yasin Khan was the eldest son and was born 10th May 1910. By the age of 16 he left India to look for work in Kenya. He travelled by sea to East Africa and landed in Mombasa. My mothers family were already in Kenya, infact my maternal grandfather was also 16 when he arrived in Kenya. This was the time there was a second attempt to build a railway from Mombasa to Lake Victoria and the inaugural platelaying ceremony was performed on 30th May, 1896. However the German East African railway had already commenced construction of the line from Tanga in May 1893, but after taking two years to build 40kms of line, the Usumbara Bahn was declared bankrupt and construction had to be taken over by the German Government. The line eventually reaching Moshi in 1912. The Uganda Railway was constructed to metre gauge as this was already in common use in India which meant there was a ready source of locomotives and rolling stock. In addition, most of the labour, skilled and unskilled, was imported from India, many of whom remained after their contracts ended to become the nucleus of the Asian community in Kenya and Uganda. My grandfather joined the railways and he was the driver who brought the first train from Mombasa to Nairobi. My mother was born on 19th November 1919 in Nairobi, and lived in Nairobi till she married my father and they moved to Tanzania, where she had ten children. I was born in Dar-es-salaam in Tanzania after seven sons. Soon after my birth we moved back to Nairobi and I had a very happy childhood playing outdoors and living in a very loving family. I started school at the age of five and my first school was The Muslim Girls School. This is a group photo of my first class. Kenya became independent in 1964, and who would have known but the Asians who had been there for generations were feeling unsettled. The following year my father made a very brave decision, and as we held British passports and he wanted his children to get good education, he decided to emigrate to England. So we were on the move again. This time across seas to another continent. He left Kenya with the older children first and we were to follow the next year with mum. We left Mombasa on board a German ship and sailed for England via the Suez Canal and through France in December 1965. The journey lasted two weeks and was a memorable trip for us children, it was like being on a cruise ship, playing on board all day while mum stayed in the cabin most of the time as she was very sea sick. It sailed through the Suez Canal and we stoped in Alexandria where my mother bought me a hand made camel which I kept for many years. Two weeks later we docked in Marseille, from where we got the train to Paris, arriving on a very cold, grey and very smokey Gare du Nord railway station. While we left mum in a cafe with all the luggage, adventurous as I was, I took my two youngest siblings to explore, and we must have stuck out like a sore thumb, as we had no warm coats, and only sandals on our feet, people started giving us small change. We finally got the train to Calais and another sea crossing awaited us, this time across a very choppy English Channel in December. The train journey from Dover to Gillingham took another hour and Dad met us and we drove up to a terraced house in a street full of exactly the same houses. How different it looked from our carefree life in a sunny country, but this was our new home and we started school the next day. Although I had learnt English at school in Kenya I found the accent very different and couldn't understand what anyone was saying to me. The other thing that always sticks in my mind, was that despite the freezing weather we were given cold bottles of milk to drink everyday, and without sugar too. Despite many other hardships I have fond memories of a warm and loving family life, mum sending us to school each morning after a hearty breakfast, then running home for a cooked lunch and then finally home for tea, and spending most of the evenings doing our homework and visiting other family friends. Unfortunately my father died five years after we arrived in England and so my mother had to carry on his dream to educate the children, and she did a good job, we are a family of professionals, doctor, lawyer, engineer, bankers, dentist, teacher etc. She died at the age of 83 and this is what the local paper wrote about her on her death. Click on the article to read my Mums obituary Just to bring you uptodate, I got married and have two daughters, who have carried on my father's dream of a good education. My older daughter is a lawyer while my younger daughter is taking her final exams in medicine. I moved to Milton Keynes in 2002 when I got a job at Milton Keynes council. This is a very beautiful city and I enjoy living in such a clean, planned, green, and modern city. By coincidence I was born in Char Gombay, Tanzania (Swahili meaning four cows), and I have come a full circle to the city of the infamous Concrete Cows.