Karen Medlicot was the wife of Richard Medlicot. By 1908, Mrs. Medlicot had moved with her husband to run a coffee plantation in British East Africa and left her children to be educated back in England. After she met the visiting Jones family, she introduced Indiana Jones to one of the plantation's workers, a native kitchen girl named Kuma, and freed her from her duties so she could act as a guide for the boy.