Leonard Mambo Mbotela - was a descendants of a freed slave

[KenyanPlato]

• Tweet

TO KENYANS ASKING WHY MBOTELA ANAZIKWA LANGATA AND NOT "USHAGO" KWAO

Not all Kenyans share the same story....ya ati shags kwetu ni X or Y so ntazikwa X or Y ancestral home....the concept doesnt exist in Lenny's case.If you want Lenny to be buried at his ancestral home that would mean flying his body to the Village of Mpanda on the shores of Lake Malawi in Malawi. Lenny unlike most assumed was not an indigenous of the Coast..eg Mijikenda Swahili etc He is an ethnic Yao and a descendant of a freed slave Mzee  Mbotela who was rescued from an Arab slave dhow heading to Arabia to be sold in some slave market in the 1860s. The freed slave Mbotela married a fellow Malawian she met at the Freretown freed settlement her name Ida Halima from Kamtunda clan in the village of  Mpanda Malawi. The two had a son Juma Mbotela who later married a freed slave from Seychelles Grace David who was the Sultan of Zanzibar slave in the early 1900s this was Lenny's grandfather from the son of Juma and Grace,  James Mbotela. If you watched the ROOTS this is the Kenyan version
A settlement was established in 1864 in Mombasa called Freretown  that became home to hundreds of these freed slaves mainly from Malawi(Wanyasa) and some from India (Bombay Africans). The tribes here were numerous including Oromo/Ethiopian and Seychelloise and Malagasy. Some were settled at Rabai while some runaway slaves established several independent maroon villages in Kilifi and Lamu counties after fleeing Arab owned plantations
Mbotela's ancestor wrote a captivating memoir "The Freeing of the Slaves" or "Uhuru wa Watumwa" back in the late 50s.
Mbotela family are an urbanite Kenyan family and most of his relatives are buried in the public cemetery at Freretown  Mombasa where many of the ex slaves and their Church leaders were laid to rest. A community similar to the Creoles in Freetown Sierra Leone and Monrovia Liberia..Christianised Urbanite Africans their lives intertwined with the history of St Emmanuel Church which was built by the freed African slaves from India(Bombay Africans) ..to most of them the concept of mashamba na maprot maguta maguta is not deep rooted.
Its the family's decision to have the legend buried at Langata...kwetu ni to respect that decision.
Kenyans we assume we are all the same but believe me kuna wengine hata ID kupata ni shida eg the Wanyasa (Malawians) of Freretown who are yet to be recognised as a Kenyan tribe at least Lenny was a celebrity he could make ways...some are forced to adopt Mijikenda names just to get an ID. We recently had the Nubians(Sudan), Shona (Zimbabweans) Makonde(Mozambicans) and Pembas (TZ)  recognised as Kenyan tribes
History class dismissed!!! ...but before I dissappear...Mbotela Estate in Eastlands Nairobi is not named after Leonard...its named after his uncle Councillor Tom Mbotela who was assassinated by Mau Mau
And by the way this may  shock you...Slavery was abolished in Kenya as recent as 1907...juzi sana... and by 1950s there were still ex slaves in Mombasa Lamu Malindi living with their former masters
FAREWELL LENNY SON OF FRERETOWN...FAREWELL LEGEND You were always excited to here stories of my experiences as a war correspondent whenever we met...excited to know how i survived covering the civil war in Somalia Sudan and Ethiopia in retun I wanted you to be part of my upcoming Enslaved Kenyan descendants documentary but Allah had other plans for you...Buriani Lenny
Abdikarim Hussein FRED Obachi Machokaa OGW

[patel]

Hizo ni stori za 1800's and early 1900's. Kenya ids were introduced in 1978 around that time. All you needed is to go que at DO office and you are issued with ID. Tu watch excuse. If you have money, buy land.

[KenyanPlato]

Hizo ni stori za 1800's and early 1900's. Kenya ids were introduced in 1978 around that time. All you needed is to go que at DO office and you are issued with ID. Tu watch excuse. If you have money, buy land.

You are missing the point. Leonard was an urbanite.. I don't think he thought of owning a piece of land was important. He didn't need to. His choice to be burried in a cemetery is choice many urban kenyans who have no ties to rural ancestral land make. About IDS getting one is easy but getting citizenship is a different matter. These groups want recognition and to be granted all attendant benefits of being recognized as a tribe

[Kadudu]

KenyanPlato, asante sana kwa historia. I did not know where Leonard Mbotela originated from and all through I thought he was Mijikenda.

[patel]

Upto mid eighties I don't think citizenship in Kenya mattered all that much as long as you could get Kenya ID and passport. At that time with Kenyan passport you could migrate just about anywhere in the world without a visa. Urbanization in Kenya started when 70's or 80's . Nairobi of 80's was a very small city with less than a million people. With KBC pay and name recognition Mbotela was elite.

Hizo ni stori za 1800's and early 1900's. Kenya ids were introduced in 1978 around that time. All you needed is to go que at DO office and you are issued with ID. Tu watch excuse. If you have money, buy land.

You are missing the point. Leonard was an urbanite.. I don't think he thought of owning a piece of land was important. He didn't need to. His choice to be burried in a cemetery is choice many urban kenyans who have no ties to rural ancestral land make. About IDS getting one is easy but getting citizenship is a different matter. These groups want recognition and to be granted all attendant benefits of being recognized as a tribe

[gout]

Mwafrika hasoras are never bound by these colonial boundaries and evil restrictions by the elites who only care about balozi titles.

I am always intrigued by the scholarly and music exchanges that were happening in the 1940s up to independence and then governments started cracking on the pan africanism with help from CIA/USAID.