MY GREAT GRAND MOTHER CAME FROM A ROYAL FAMILY

My other great grandfather,  Kavalakang’ombe mwa Saula whose christian name was Benedict Saula, was  born in 1891 and died on the 31 August 1946. He was of Wasangu tribe. The Wasangu was another tribe that fought a number of wars with Mutwa Mukwava.

Kavalakang’ombe  loved to smoke home made cigars from the tobacco plants he had planted around his house, and was known for hanging his rolled cigars behind his ears. He was a great builder and was one of the masons who built the Catholic church in Tosamaganga. The walls of his own house which he must have built in 1920s or before, were still standing in 2017.  The technology he used to build his house must have come from what he learnt from the Germans while building the church.
The Wahehes traditionally built mud houses, and Kavalakang'ombes houses were built in stone, he built two houses the original house which still stood in the 60s and the later building which was destroyed in the last 10 years by his descendants, who tore  it down  to sale the stones. 

Roman Catholic Church Tosamaganga

Part of the remaining walls of my great grandfather's house

My great grandmother Adelaide  seMkombe, who was known to every one as Bibi Kongo, there is a story that she got that name because it was assumed she came from Kongo. Bibi Kongo had a sad but adventurous child hood, these two were the parents of Elizabeth seSaula my grand mother and my father’s mother. I was lucky enough to have known Bibi Kongo, she lived up to a very old age but was always very kind to everybody. Bibi Kongo had a lot to tell, she used to tell us that she was a daughter of a Nyamwezi Chief somewhere in Tabora. She was taken from her father by German soldiers who had been fighting with her father, she was taken as guarantee that her father would never challenge the Germans again, and she would be brought back when everything was fine. She was never returned to her parents.

Bibi Kongo outside her house March 10, 1967

The Germans took her from Tabora to Bagamoyo. It was fascinating hearing her telling us  of the journey from Tabora via Kilimatinde on a to Bagamoyo with the German army, a distance of 825 kilometers by foot, and she must have been hardly 10 years old!!,
When she arrived in Bagamoyo she was handed over to a woman who immediately turned her into a slave. One day when she was sent to fetch water she escaped to a nearby catholic church which was run by French priests, who had at the time set up a camp for freed slaves.
For some reason she became part of a caravan that was going to the  Catholic mission at Tosamaganga in Iringa. So again she was in a 490 kilometer journey from Bagamoyo to Iringa. On the way to Iringa her group met up with a group of soldiers transporting the head of Mutwa Mkwawa from Iringa to Dar es Salaam. So it must have been late 1898 or  sometime in 1899 because Mutwa Mukwava killed himself on 19^th June 1898.
Bibi Kongo arrived in Tosamaganga, she learned to read and write and while in Tosamaganga met the mason Kavalang’ombe and they married and went on to get 4 daughters.
Giyomana- who was baptized and given the name Benedicta

Giogela- whose Christian name became Lucia

Natalia and the youngest was Elizabeth whom we all called, Mtagulu. Who was to become my grand mother.