🎙️ Episode 47 – Roland Allbrook (Part 1)Empire, Boarding School & The Blindfolded Boy
This episode is different.
No hype.No outrage clips.No culture-war bait.
Just a manuscript.
In Episode 47 (Part 1), I sit down with Roland Allbrook — a man I first met in West New Britain, Papua New Guinea, between Kimbe and Rabaul. We were both teaching there between 2017 and 2020. I was teaching construction. Roland was teaching literature.
At night, over a few “Scooby Doos” in the PNG humidity, the stories would start.
Kenya Highlands.Missionary boarding schools.Union Jacks raised at sunrise.Bamboo canes.Prefects with power.Colonial tension bubbling beneath the surface.
Eventually, those conversations became a manuscript — seventy years of memory pressed into ink. Not polished. Not rewritten to make himself the hero. Just honest.
This episode opens that manuscript for the first time.
🇰🇪 Growing Up in Colonial Kenya
Roland was raised in the Kenya Highlands during the tail end of the Mau Mau uprising — a violent and brutal period in British colonial history.
As boys, they played rugby, chanted “Tummy, do your job” each morning, polished prefect shoes and followed rigid ritual.
What they didn’t see?
The violence happening around them.The displacement.The killings.The system they were inside.
That’s the confronting part.
Not evil children.Not conscious cruelty.But blindness.
Empire survives on ritual.On repetition.On belief.
And young boys rarely question the system they’re born into.
🏫 Discipline or Ritualised Power?
Roland describes corporal punishment that many would now label abuse:
Six strokes for the crime.Six for lying about it.One for good measure.Shake the man’s hand.“Thank you, sir.”
It wasn’t just discipline.
It was performance.Power.Hierarchy.
And yet — here’s the powerful twist:
Roland never carried that forward.
He never beat his own children.Never used violence as a teacher in Papua New Guinea.In fact, he rarely had discipline issues because students respected his style.
That’s generational interruption.
🧭 Moral Courage
One of the most striking elements of this story is Roland’s father.
In a deeply segregated colonial environment, his father quietly invited African leaders into their home. Treated them as equals. Acted with understated moral courage.
For that, young Roland was labelled dangerous.
Equality was threatening.
Let that sink in.
🧠 Why This Matters Now
This episode isn’t about attacking history.It’s about understanding it.
We still live inside systems.We still inherit rituals.We still argue about migration, identity and belonging.
Roland’s reflections force us to ask:
• What shaped us?• What did we not see?• What have we chosen to interrupt?
That’s the real question.
🔥 Part 2 Coming Soon
This is only the foundation.
Part 2 will go deeper into:
• Colonial blindness• Cultural tension• Identity and migration• Moral courage in adulthood• And how those early years shaped the teacher, father and thinker Roland became
And honestly?
With seventy years of lived experience, this could easily become a monthly series. The memories are layered, confronting and incredibly intriguing.
We’re just getting started.
If this episode stirred something in you — share it.
And if you’ve got stories sitting unwritten… start writing.
One day, someone might open your manuscript too.
🎙️ Who Is Your HeroHosted by BuzzPart 2 dropping soon.
