When the Nation reported his death in October 2021, it called Abdalla Mnyenze the elder "who steered the conservation of Kaya forests". For more than a decade before that, journalists, scientists and politicians who came to Kaya Chinondo met the same man at the edge of the forest. He explained its rules and spoke for the elders who kept it.
No one has written his life. This article gathers what newspapers and two academic studies record, and says where they disagree. Mzee is a term of respect for an elder.
Kaya Chinondo
A kaya is a fortified village built in a forest clearing by the Mijikenda peoples. Long after the villages were abandoned, the forests around them were kept as sacred places, holding the graves of ancestors and the fingo, a buried protective charm. Kaya Chinondo, near the coast just south of Diani, is one of the oldest Digo kayas. The historian David Sperling names Kwale and Chinondo as the first kayas the Digo founded south of Mombasa. In 2008 the kaya forests were listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
Each kaya was governed by its elders, the ngambi, the council of elders that kept the kaya's rules and led its prayers. In the 2000s and 2010s Mnyenze was the Kaya Chinondo elder most often named as its leader.
The Custodian
In April 2008 the East African Standard described "Mzee Ali Abdalla Mnyenze" as "the custodian of Kaya Chinondo, the Digo's main shrine" and founder chairman of the Coast Kaya Committees. Through him the paper set out the rules of the kaya. Anyone taking part in kaya prayers had to be Digo and married. People going to the centre of the forest had to take off their shoes and wear a shuka (a plain cloth). "We don't allow beer, soda, shoes or perfumes inside the kayas," he said. He also said: "There is no conflict between the kaya culture and other religions. We direct our prayers to God but also seek the blessings of our ancestors."
He told the paper that his grandfather, Mwinyikai Mwawandinda, was the last person to be buried at Kaya Chinondo, in 1942. The same report said that "Kaya Chinondo elders, led by Mnyenze, have set up a nature trail project". The kaya had been closed to all but selected local people until 2001, when the community began an ecotourism project.
Speaking for the Forests
Development pressure on the south coast grew in these years. In February 2009 the Nation photographed "Kaya elder Ali Mnyenze" showing trees cut down by a developer on Chale Island. In 2014, as "chairman of Coast Kayas", he backed the elders' call for title deeds for the sacred forests, saying their conservation was "important to preserve rare tree species". In 2015, amid plans to mine rare-earth minerals in Kwale, he told Inter Press Service that the Mijikenda "consider themselves culturally and spiritually bound to their forests".
The kayas also drew politicians, and Mnyenze was part of that story. In March 2008 Kaya Chinondo hosted elders blessing the minister Chirau Ali Mwakwere, and Mnyenze said similar prayers had been held for Kassim Mwamzandi before the 1963 election. In 2019 he led prayers at Kaya Chinondo for the protection of Nairobi's governor, Mike Sonko, whom the paper described as "embattled". Such ceremonies divided kaya elders. They show how much weight the kaya still carried, and how hard it was to keep it out of politics.
A Healer and a Source
Mnyenze also passed on knowledge to researchers. In October 1996 the scholar Hassan Ndzovu interviewed "Abdallah Mnyenze of Kaya Chinondo" about the traditions of the kaya's founding and about Digo beliefs on sorcery. The Digo ethnobotanist Mohamed Pakia lists "Abdallah Mnyedze, Kaya Chinondo" first among the kaya elders he consulted, and thanks him in his 2005 thesis. Pakia also describes an Abdalla Mnyendze who practised as a healer from an office labelled "Dr. Mnyendze", with bottles of prepared plant medicines. He notes that this healer still based his authority on his "famous teachers". The spellings differ, and it is likely but not certain that these passages describe the same man.
What the Record Does Not Settle
His dates are uncertain. The Nation's obituary of 13 October 2021 gave his age as 93, which would place his birth around 1928. Ndzovu, however, recorded him as aged 55 in 1996, which would place it around 1941. The obituary does not give the exact date of his death, only that he had been ill.
His name appears as Abdalla Mnyenze, Ali Abdalla Mnyenze and Mnyenze Abdalla Ali. His titles vary too: chairman of the Coast Kaya Committees or Coast Kayas, chair of the Mijikenda Council of Kaya Elders, and, at his death, chairperson of the Kwale Kaya Elders. These may reflect different bodies at different times, or different ways of reporting one office.
Legacy
At his death, the chairman of the Kaya Elders Association, Mwinyi Mwalimu, said Mnyenze "was a great counsellor even to the other older men and led key decision-making concerning our culture". His grandson Hamisi Kapera said people knew him as one who had "taken all teachings from our ancestors". Kaya Chinondo still stands beside the hotels of Diani. That it does is the work of many unnamed elders, and Mnyenze was the one the outside world came to know.