The Taveta baobab tree that housed a German sniper

A baobab tree. [Courtesy]

The stretch of road from Taveta to Voi is laden with World War I memorial sites.

These range from war cemeteries, an old, decommissioned railway line, bullet-ridden buildings and other structures that bear scars of fire exchange between British and German forces.

Then there is a baobab tree. At first glance, nothing seems extraordinary about the tree that is a few kilometres from Taveta town. It is not the only such tree in this semi-arid locality that borders Tsavo West National Park.

That is until you get closer. The rugged tree holds many secrets about the war that roped in locals who had no idea about the source of grievances between the two feuding nations.

But one German widow, Magdalene von Prince, who was known locally as Mama Shukurani, had personal scores to settle with the British soldiers ever since the then Governor of British East Africa made a pronouncement carried by the East African Standard (now The Standard) that two countries were now at war locally. And the baobab tree was central to her exploits.

The genesis of Shukurani’s bitterness can be traced to when the two forces clashed in the Battle of Tanga, the first real conflagration between the two forces that ignited the East African chapter of the war.

The British suffered massive losses from a much smaller and poorly equipped German forces. The Germans, numbering about 1,000 under the no-nonsense Paul von Lettow-Volbeck, outmanoeuvred the 8,000 British troops  who had superior arms.

The British tried all tricks, including agitating nearby swarms of bees. Both camps were stung. Though the Germans won the battle, to Mama Shukurani, the war was personal. Her husband, Tom von Prince, the man she had married 18 years earlier, was killed by the British in the November 1914 feud.

Shukurani vowed to revenge the killing. The baobab in Taveta offered the perfect hideout. Shukurani is said to have crept inside the tree from where she waylaid British soldiers running away from German fire at the nearby Salaita (slaughter) Hill.

While the number of soldiers killed by Shukurani’s rifle are unknown, her legacy lives through the tree that bears all the hallmarks of a deadly conflict. Several bullet marks on the tree are still visible, evidence that the British may have tried to smoke out an unseen enemy in vain. She died in 1936 in Silesia, in today’s southwestern Poland.

The tree, or Sniper’s Baobab, has become a shrine of sorts.