April 1998 
15 
was briefly Nairobi’s head rat-catcher. In the late 1930s 
he joined Pest Control (a Quin Geering company that 
was the forerunner of Fisons) with whom he remained 
(with the exception of war service in the Royal Army 
Medical Corps in Ethiopia and Somaliland) for the 
remainder of his official working career. 
In 1938 he met Eleanor MacDonald whom he 
married in 1940 and with whom he had two sons. Fisons 
and even more, Eleanor, steadied Chum somewhat: as 
employers and wives usually do. 
Eleanor MacDonald was born in Uganda, but 
educated in Scotland. Aged 18 and having passed her 
Scottish ‘highers’ she returned to East Africa. Joining 
the Medical Research Laboratories and despite no formal 
training, she was quickly established as a technician in 
the pathology section. Later she switched to entomology 
which became her forte, developing into a world 
authority on African mosquitoes. In recognition she was 
awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Burnell University. 
Not only was Eleanor Chum’s loving helpmate, but her 
first class brain kept up with and stimulated Chum’s 
own scientific research. 
After the war, Chum grew a beard which was always 
well groomed and Chum was quite vain about it. It wasn't 
until after several intermittent stays in the Gezira cotton 
project in the Sudan between 1963 and 1968, where it 
won him high praise from his Arab colleagues, that he 
refused to trim it and it evolved into the wild, greying, 
prophet’s growth so well known to many of us. 
In his career Chum van Someren was a hard-working 
company man who concentrated upon insect pests, but 
could turn his hand to anything, going further than most 
company men would hold reasonable. Many of the 
experiments on plants undei taken for Fisons were carried 
out on his own property at Miotoni. Characteristically, 
when he did something, he undertook it without 
reservation, throwing everything into finding the right 
answer. 
Then there was the other Chum: van Someren the 
naturalist. In this he followed his eminent father's 
footsteps. With a Victorian’s insatiable curiosity, 
throughout his life he was fascinated by nature and never 
ceased to marvel at the life about him. Over the years 
he became a veritable encyclopaedia, not only on Africa’s 
natural history, but the whole planet's. And he gave out 
his knowledge freely and enthusiastically. Anyone who 
asked was given whatever he knew in full measure. 
Chum was a compulsive note-taker and diarist. He 
wrote many papers, though they were fewer than he 
might have produced, given the information at his 
disposal He did not write up all his material because 
his primary interest was discovery and not reporting. 
He was one of those whose interest was doing and not 
the fame of having done 
After a professional career dominated by entomology, 
when he left Fisons he became the National Museums 
of Kenya’s ornithologist. When he retired for the second 
time, the Museum made him Ornithologist Emeritus. 
While he loved all nature, his work with birds pleased 
him best and gave him greatest satisfaction. He, and his 
father V.G.L van Someren, were outstanding naturalists, 
contributing more than any other two men this century 
to East Africa’s ornithology and entomology. 
Summing up: Chum was a man who could have, some 
would say should have, been better known than he was 
He was charitable, liked people and had a loving family. 
Without question he benefited his fellow humans, lived 
a long and happy life, and shared this happiness with 
others. His time was well used. Chum knew his sands 
were running out. The way he put it to me three days 
before his death was “I have written my last paper ” He 
is now gone. That he be mourned is inevitable and right 
Yet it was the nature of the man to prefer being 
remembered, not with a tear, but a smile between friends 
with noggins in hand, recalling incidents past. He was 
not religious. Chum marvelled at Nature, saw it as a 
grand act of creation and mystery immensely beyond 
human comprehension- which is where he left it. 
Ian Parker, Langata 
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