Sh5.35m for Rabai Multicultural upgrade

Mzalendo Kibunjia, General Director NMK and German Ambassador Jutta Frasch sign the deal.

Germany will spend Sh5.35 million to upgrade Rabai Multicultural landscape at the Coast.

On Monday, German ambassador Jutta Frasch and the general director of the National Museums of Kenya Dr Mzalendo Kibunjia signed an agreement for the revitalisation and upgrading of the facility.

The project will be funded by the German Federal Foreign Office and will be undertaken this year.

The Rabai Mission Station, located near Mombasa, was built in 1846 and is the first church edifice in Kenya.

It was founded by German Johannes Ludwig Krapf, the first missionary in East Africa.

He was later joined by his colleague Johannes Rebmann, with whom he studied the local languages and produced the first Kiswahili dictionary. Within two years, he translated the New Testament into Kiswahili.

The first building at the mission station was a church, which was later followed by Krapf’s and Rebmann’s cottages.

Besides their missionary work, the two German pastors founded a school, which still exists today and which was named after Isaac Nyondo, the first African missionary.

This educational institution made a significant contribution to the introduction of Western medicine and was also used by missionaries to fight slave trade at the Coast of East Africa.

In 1998 and 2001, the Krapf Memorial Museum and the Visitor Centre were established at Rabai.

The new initiative aims at reconstructing the mission and at improving the condition of all historical and related features within the Rabai Multi-Cultural landscape.