“In about 1944, our great grandfather "Gaggar" acquired a 20-acre beach-front plot at Tiwi on the Kenya coast about 15 miles south of Mombasa. On it he built a simple "banda" - a holiday house constructed of whitewashed coral blocks with a high palm-thatch roof - for the family to stay in and enjoy their holidays by the sea. The original banda had a kitchen, a bathroom and four bedrooms, though when we all stayed there, overflow dormitories could be set up on the spacious veranda that surrounded the house on three sides. The house sat atop a coral ridge above the beach and from it, through the branches of giant baobabs and palm fronds swaying in the breeze, one could admire the breakers as they crashed and foamed against the coral reef, at the end of their long journey across the Indian Ocean. In the cool mornings we would venture out to swim in the lagoon and explore up and down the long sandy beach. If the tide was out, we'd poke around on the exposed reef for cowries, or snorkel in the Eerie and Very Eerie pools (Gaggar's names for two rock pools, hollowed out by the sea under a nearby coral cliff.) A good lunch of local fish would be followed by a lazy afternoon on the shady verandah.”

— John Low, from his book “Gags - Nellie Cobham and her Kenya Family”