His love for African culture and art and consequently the establishment of a Pan –African gallery in Kenya dates back to 1969 when he quit his humanitarian job to explore Africa. Travelling through the Sahara across Congo to Kenya, Alan was in search of a place and a people that had not been influenced by Western culture. He visited the Northern Frontier of Kenya and spent three months there particularly fascinated by how Turkana people used everything in their harsh desert environment to make beautiful clothing, ornaments and weapons. He started collecting everything the Turkana people made and brought that collection to Nairobi. The US Embassy encouraged him to open an exhibition and the only African to attend his first exhibition was the late Joseph Murumbi, who was also the second Vice President of Kenya.

“Joe,” as Alan calls him, “came back to me after the exhibition and asked me; ‘would you go back to Turkana and make more collections for me?’ I told him yes. He gave me the money and I went back to Turkana. I would go crocodile hunting with the Turkana people and they would give me full sets of crocodile teeth which I would string on fish line with ostrich egg shell, python vertebrae, dik-dik toe bones. We melted down cooking pots to make earrings and incised designs on them with a hot nail.” Alan remembers.