1/7 #HistoryKeThread: Thomas Joseph Odhiambo Mboya (August 15, 1930 - July 5, 1969) and Luis de Assis Correia, co-founders of Africa-America Foundation, Kenya, flanked by some of the 81 students en route to the USA on the first charter flight airlift from...
2/7 ...Embakasi Airport,...
3/7 ...Nairobi to Idlewild Airport, New York.
4/7 JFK International Airport was at the time known as Idlewild Airport.
5/7 One of the beneficiaries of the airlift was a then 23 years old Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. (1936-24 November 1982), who has been identified as the bespectacled and smiling man standing in front, fourth from right.
6/7 The second lady to Mboya’s left is none other than the late Nobel laureate Prof. Wangari Maathai.
7/7 Tom Mboya was killed yesterday, 49 years ago.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
#RIPJosephKamaru: The curtain falls on the life of legendary Gîkûyû benga musician Joseph Kamaru, following a long illness.
This is the man whose debut 1969 hit track, Darling ya Mwarîmû (teacher’s darling), caused a storm in parliament and in the national teachers’ union, who threatened to go on strike.
It took Mzee Kenyatta’s intercession to put the storm to rest.
He composed hundreds of gîkûyû songs throughout his lifetime. In 1989, he released the track Safari ya Japan shortly after his return from the Asian country, where he had accompanied Kamaru retired President Moi on a state visit.
#HistoryKeThread: Seen here conferring with then President Moi, Mr. Burudi Nabwera is a former diplomat, MP, Asst. Minister and later not only Secretary General of KANU in its heydays, but also a Minister for State.
Last year, the alumnus of Makerere University released his biography, ‘How It Happened’, a book that should be a good read for anyone interested in the politics of Kenya during the single-party era.
On 7th of October 1990, Mr. Nabwera caused a stir when he announced that the government would not prosecute anyone for the murder of former minister Robert Ouko. The report by Scotland Yard’s detective John Troon, Nabwera argued, had not named any killers.
In 1890, author Thomas Stevens authored the book, Scouting for Stanley.
The book is an account of the time Thomas spent in East Africa, where he had been sent to join in the search for legendary explorer Henry Morton Stanley.
In April of 1898, he camped at Ndara Hill among the Wataita. Here, a Rev. Wray of the Church Mission Society strived to teach the Wataita with much difficulty about the gospel of Christ. Perhaps this difficulty is what led Rev. Wray to dabble in farming.
#HistoryKeThread: When Colonial Officials Adopted Locals As Mistresses
Hell hath no fury like a randy colonial officer stationed miles away from conjugal comfort.
In the early colonial years, the Governors' subordinates were initially men taken over from Imperial British EA Company (IBEAC). Later on, a professional class of colonial civil servants was recruited to take up the many administrative positions opening up in the colony.
Many of the officers had hardly gone beyond the age of 30.
As such, they invariably found themselves sexually starved and lonely. That is, if they didn't have African mistresses.
In July, 1846, pioneering missionary Ludwig Krapf struggled to attend to his ailing, bed-ridden wife.
Krapf had suffered a debilitating fever and so had his wife, Mrs. Dietrich Krapf, who was in a worse state....
She had days earlier given birth to a baby girl at their budding Rabai mission.
Hours to her death, she asked Krapf to bury her right there at Rabai, saying she needed her remains to "constantly remind the passersby of the great object which...
...had brought the servants of the church of Christ to their country...."
Krapf would much later write that his wife "wished to be preaching to them by the lonely spot which encloses her earthly remains."