NAIROBI, Kenya, Sep 19 – The family of the late freedom fighter Koitalel Arap Samoei has re-kindled their demands to the British government to return the head of their kin.
Samoei’s Grand-Son Ambrose Tarus made the demand on Monday in Koitalel mausoleum in Nandi Hills – a day when Britain’s longest-serving monarch, Queen Elizabeth II was buried.
“It is time that the family and the community can enjoy peace,” Tarus said.
Samoei an Orkoiyot or spiritual leader of the Nandi people was decapitated and his head taken to England as a war trophy, according to Nandi elders.
Tarus also demanded that the British government pay Sh150 billion as compensation to the Nandi community for the losses of lives and property.
The family also demanded a public apology from the British government for their atrocities.
Samoei spearheaded fierce opposition to the construction of the so-called “Lunatic Express,” a railway from Kenya’s Indian Ocean port of Mombasa through Nandi in the Rift Valley to Lake Victoria in Uganda.
More than 12,000 people are believed to have been killed in a bloody 10-year struggle over the railroad that began in 1895 when surveyors first marked Nandi territory as a route for the tracks.
The exact cause and nature of Somoei’s death is shrouded by the mists of time. Still, Kenyan historians say scheming British colonial authorities lured him to a meeting allegedly to arrange a truce and then shot him.
However, generations of Nandi elders maintain that their leader was decapitated and disposed of in an unknown location by his killers that have yet to be discovered.
Samoei, a diviner, launched his unsuccessful and ultimately fatal struggle after prophesying that a black snake spitting fire — a steam engine — would pass through Nandiland, destroying tribal culture and disenfranchising local farmers and cattle herders.
Kenyan historians say British colonial authorities lured Samoei to a meeting in October 1905 ostensibly to negotiate a truce but instead he and a number of fellow warriors were shot dead.
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