Likoni faces Mombasa island across a narrow stretch of water. Its Digo lived closer to the town than almost any other Digo community, and the town's traders came to them. Salim Mwabundu grew up in this setting. He started out as a small trader for Baluchi merchants, became one of the first Muslims at Likoni, built its second mosque, and ended up as both the leader of the senior local kaya and a colonial headman.
Nearly everything known about him comes from his grandson, Saidi bin Khalfan Mwabundu, whom the historian David Sperling interviewed at Bomani in 1987, together with a few entries in colonial records.
The Kayas of Likoni
By the 19th century the Digo of the Likoni area lived in four kayas: Puma, Chibuyuni, Timbwani and Shonda. A kaya was a fortified settlement and ritual centre, governed by a council of elders (ngambi). Its senior elder, the mwanatsi ("son of the land"), led the ceremonies and was normally chosen through the mother's line from the founding clan. The four Likoni kayas formed a federation whose elders met and made sacrifices together. Shonda came first among them. It held the earliest ancestral graves and one of the oldest protective charms (fingo) of the area, and ritual processions passed through the other three kayas before reaching Shonda, where the main ceremonies took place.
Muslims did not live at Likoni in the early 19th century, though Kilindini Swahili from Mombasa farmed there. In 1837 the Sultan of Zanzibar posted Baluchi soldiers at Mombasa, and they soon began trading with the Digo. Some took Digo wives. With no Digo market at Likoni, traders laid out their goods near the shore.
A Trader and a Convert
Salim Mwabundu was converted by the Baluchi "while still a young man, before he had married, some time before 1880". His grandson remembered how it happened:
He started out trading with the Baluchi in a small way. Then, when he became a Muslim, they had more confidence in him, so trading increased.
On market days he went with the Baluchi to Ngare's market at Pungu, and they gave him money to buy baskets, mats and skins. Traders named Muradi and Maluki came to him. Muradi bought goats at Chinango and brought them to Mwabundu's place for the night, before taking them across to Mombasa the next morning.
There was no mosque at Likoni then. Like other Digo converts, Mwabundu went to Mombasa for Friday prayers and for Ramadhan. He is said to have prayed at the Khonzi Mosque, where the Imam taught him how to give the Friday sermon (khutba).
Teachers and Mosques
In the early 1890s Mwabundu sent his eldest son, Khalfan, to study the Qur'an. Khalfan's first teacher was Mbwana bin Ali Mwarako, a Digo from Tanga who was teaching at Likoni. He then studied in Mombasa, and finally at Pongwe with Bakari Mwanjama, a Segeju teacher and a friend of his father. He was still at Pongwe when it was destroyed in October 1895, in the fighting between the British and Shaykh Mbaruk of Gasi, and his teacher moved with his pupils to Ramisi.
In 1899 Khamis Dzubgwe built Likoni's first mosque, the Riyadha Mosque. When Khalfan came home he became its Imam. In about 1909 Salim Mwabundu built the second, the Bomani Mosque, after first digging a well nearby with the help of a Bohora Muslim from Mombasa. Khalfan left the Riyadha Mosque to become the first Imam at Bomani, and after the First World War he opened a Qur'an school there. A government list of mosques in 1913 records one belonging to "Salim wa Bundu".
Under British Rule
Sperling records that Mwabundu became leader of Kaya Shonda and Headman of Likoni location, but the sources consulted do not say when he took either post. Colonial files give a few more glimpses. In 1913 he was the only Digo at Likoni with a Native Liquor Trading Licence. When the government invited land claims south of Mombasa in 1914, he was among the prominent Digo who applied for title deeds. From Likoni and Mtongwe, 96 people filed 149 claims.
How the Record Survives
No date of birth or death for Mwabundu has been found. His story survives mainly through one family memory, passed from grandfather to grandson, and through a handful of government lists. It is not known how he balanced the ritual duties of Kaya Shonda with his life as a Muslim. Sperling found that Digo Muslim elders elsewhere, such as Abdallah Mwapodzo at Diani, went on leading kaya ceremonies, but he gives no such detail for Shonda.
Legacy
Salim Mwabundu's life follows a path that Sperling saw again and again south of Mombasa. Trade with town Muslims led to conversion. The convert stayed in his village, and in time he built a mosque there and sent his son to be educated. The Bomani Mosque and the school his son started brought Islam into Likoni's own neighbourhoods. His grandson was still living at Bomani when Sperling met him in 1987.