Karen Blixen Museum

It's located 10 km from Nairobi "at the foot of Ngong Hills"owned by Danish Author Karen and her Swedish Husband, Baron von Blixen Fincke.The Museum is open to the Public every day (9.30 am to 6pm) including weekends and public holidays. Visitors are encouraged to be at the Museum latest 5.30pm.

The best part about the entire tour is that once you pay at the reception, you are automatically handed over to a tour guide.So giving my story, our tour guide who was a lady took us to a sitting area at the front of the Karen Blixen home and gave us an overview of Karen Blixen, who she was and what she did , just a general story of her life. So this is the general story line; The Museum was built in 1912 by Swedish Engineer Ake Sjogren. Karen and her husband bought the Museum house in 1917 and it become the farm house for their 4500 acre farm, of which 600 acres was used for coffee farming. Their marriage failed after eight years and in 1921 the Baron moved on and left the running of the farm to Karen. Karen lived at the house until her return to Denmark in 1931. The house farm was bought by Remy Marin, who broke the land into 20 acre parcels for development. Subsequent development created the present suburb of Karen.

Oh and interesting part is Baron (Karen's hubby) was her cousin. I know weird right? and apparently the reason for their failed marriage was that Baron was cheating on her whenever he went for his travels so yah, how sad.They later got divorced and She found a new lover (an English man, Denis Finch Hatton). Anyway The house was sporadically occupied until purchased in 1964 by the Danish government and given to the Kenyan government as an independence gift.The government set up a college of nutrition and the Museum was initially used as the principal’s house. In 1985 the shooting of a movie based on Karen’s autobiography began and the National Museums of Kenya expressed acquired the house for the purpose of establishing a Museum. The Museum was opened in 1986.The Museum still retains the home's original furniture during the period Karen was living there, together with the arrangement of most of the rooms and even lanterns showing that there was no electricity ,which i find to be quite impressive in trying to retain history.

The museum represents the broad historical pattern of European settlement and cultivation of East Africa. It's part of Kenya history during the British Colonial years.