Whereas Tommy Woods’ general store on Victoria Street (today’s Tom Mboya Street) in Nairobi may be considered by some to have been the first formal post office in the 1890s, postal services in Kenya date back to the 17th Century. After the Portuguese overpowered the Arabs on the East African coast, they installed a governor in Mombasa in 1592 and there is evidence of official correspondence between the port town and the outside world from 1610. The mail was carried by ship to the Arabian peninsular and India then transmitted overland to Europe.
Early letters from the interior of Kenya date back to around 1848 when missionaries sent their written correspondence by native runners (some with cleft sticks) to the coast for onward transmission by ship. By 1877, some letters from the coast were being taken north from Lamu to Aden by ships of the British Steam Navigation Company, although the bulk of mail was being transmitted through Zanzibar.
