Forts of Freedom
By James Rogoi, Saturday, 16th August, 1631
The stones of Fort Jesus hold the day’s heat in, long after the sun has drowned itself in the Indian Ocean. Yusuf bin Hassan,native son of Mombasa feels the heat through the soles of his feet as he moves – slowly, deliberately – along the inner shadows of the wall. Three of his men stealthily follow. Every sound carries this night, the scrape of leather, the distant cough of a sentry, the low groan of the tide below the ramparts. His forearms prickled, hair standing on end as though the body itself sensed history tightening its grip on his arm and the dagger that’s tightly gripped in it.
He tastes salt on his tongue.His father’s murder, years earlier, was sanctioned and excused by those represented inside the fort tonight. Is it rage, is it vengeance, is it purpose. We’ll never know what’s in his mind on this night. Only that, minutes later, Pedro Leitao de Gamboa, the Portuguese so called captain of Fort Jesus lays at Yusuf bin Hassan’s feet, his blood slowly trickling into the seams of the makeshift tiled floor.
Dom Jeronimo, as the Portuguese call Yusuf will in a few short months abandon the city of his birth for a life on the run in the high seas of the Indian Ocean. The Portuguese will chase but never catch him. They don’t know it then, but that dagger through Gamboa’s heart is the beginning of the end of the Portuguese reign in East Africa.
Almost 400 years later, Fort Jesus still stands in Mombasa and is a UNESCO heritage site open for tours and exploration. From the unidentified man entombed in glass in the middle of the compound to the torrid history of the rise and fall of empires told by guides, Fort Jesus is one of the sites in Kenya that Jambotron Safaris strongly recommends as a must see. https://tally.so/r/lbBEJp
