Author: Gioia Shah
Published on: 09/03/2025 | 00:00:00
AI Summary:
Ogoyi Ogunde was his father’s greatest pride – strong, intelligent, fit to shoulder the privilege and burden of leading the clan in the future. When conscription officers came to their village one day, his father pleaded with them not to take him. It was no use. The white men threatened him with jail, and carted him away. “The war left a very big scar in my family,” says Patrick Abungu. No visible trace Abungu slams shut the driver’s door of the Toyota Prado and looks at the metal gate in front of him. The informal welders are looking for 17 graves of Africans who died in World War II. They were buried in so-called “native cemeteries” separate from where Europeans were laid to rest. Abungu is heritage manager at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) in Kenya. The London-based organisation looks after the memory of those who died for Great Britain and the Commonwealth in the two World Wars. In Word War I alone, British forces employed around 50,000 African soldiers and more than one million African “carriers”, or porters who transported war materials. Most of these participated in the East Africa campaign, a series of brutal and arduous battles against German troops between 1914 and 1918. The pristinely kept burial ground for World War I and II dead is managed by the CWGC. It is made up of neat rows of light grey headstones, all equal in shape and size, in a bed of gravel. The space is the embodiment of dignity and respect. But walking along the rows of headstone, among the names, not a single African one can be found. This was known to the organisation for decades, but it took an explosive documentary to air in the United Kingdom in 2019. Imperial War Graves Commission, as the CWGC was then known, began process of assuming responsibility for graves, relocating remains to more permanent cemeteries and erecting headstones. For the vast majority of African war dead, this never happened. In contrast to places like France where the commission had direct access to information on deaths, in colonies such as Kenya it largely depended on colonial authorities and the military to provide the names of the war dead. Abungu has loved history since he was a child, a seed planted by his grandfather. His decision to study history was not in the plans of his father, who preferred him to become a doctor. He chose information and communications technology instead and entered the military. Kenyans have been travelling across the country looking for lost burial grounds. They travel once or twice a month on field trips to Nakuru and Kisumu. At times, they’ve called in help from the British army, which has provided ground-penetrating radar. In Kisumu, a city nestled on the shores of Lake Victoria, the team came across Jeremiah Otieno Sino. The 82-year-old is standing on an open field, next to a hospital, where a group of boys are playing football. This is what the team needed: confirmation of a “native cemetery” that had been abandoned sometime during the colonial period. The project is working in Kenya but in other countries such as South Africa, Sierra Leone, Egypt and India. The project is striving towards its ultimate goal: to commemorate those who have previously been forgotten in a manner that is befitting of the communities they came from, and the times. But inherent in the programme’s work is one inalienable truth.
Original: 2861 words
Summary: 575 words
Percent reduction: 79.90%