SAVED FROM SLAVERY.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 19033, 10 June 1924, Page 3

SAVED FROM SLAVERY.

LINK WITH LIVINGSTONE. MEMORIES OF AN OLD MAN. An old African native, who as a boy was rescued from slavery by the great African explorer, David Livingstone, is living in a little cottage in Chislehurst, Kent. Arab Makeppo, the name by which Livingstone knew the lad he rescued, is not sure of his age. “No registration in my land in those days,” he recently said. 4< l was a young boy when my governor freed m. David Livingstone was my governor; that’s all I know.” But soon memories of the sunny land where he was born began to awaken. He brightened up and his mouth expanded in a genial smile, and he even began to sing a song or two which he had learnt as a little boy while he watched his mother cooking his meals of rice over an oven made by digging a hole in the ground. Makeppo, who was christened George Watto shortly after his arrival in England by the English people who employed him as cook, was wearing five coats and four waistcoats when seen by a writer in the Daily Chronicle, for he stilus finds the English winter trying, and looks forward eagerly to the glints of spring sunshine. I persuaded him to sing one of the songs which have stayed in his memory for 60 or 70 years, since as a little boy a treacherous brother sold him to the Portugese slave traders.

RESCUED FROM SLAVE TRADERS. Makeppo claims to be an Arab. It must have been in the course of Livingstone ’s expedition up the Shire River with Bishop Mackenzie in 1861, that the boy Makeppo was rescued from the Portugese slave traders. Livingstone recorded that the Wa-yan were raiding the Manamia for slaves during that journey, and that liberated slaves attached themselves to the mission of which he was the head. Arab Makeppo recalls the journey of the slaves to the coast were Portugese ships were waiting to carry them away. The men were tied two by two to wooden collars, which they wore even in their sleep; the women chained at wrists and ankles, the girls roped like horses, and the little ones free, but kept in the centre of the party. The old man explained that Livingstone and his party got hold of natives and learnt their language, then sent them out with news that the English were the friends of the natives and would not enslave them. 4 ‘But we were frightened all the same,” he said, “when Red-Coats began to fire Pom, Pom, Pom.” FIVE HUNDRED SLAVES LIBERATED. There is no record that English soldiers accompanied Livingstone. The

explorer’s party is said to have fired in self-defence on a party of slavetraders, and it may be that some kind of uniform which the little native confused with the red coats of the soldiers, seen at a later date. Whatever the truth of the old man’s dim recollections may be, the slavers were routed, and about 500 men, women and children received their freedom at the hands of the English. Livingstone chose little Arab Makeppo as his body servant, and the great explorer became the “governor” once and for all of his dusky little adorer. “When got tired governor put me on his back like child, and held legs in front,” the old man recalls. Later Livingstone sent his servant down to Capetown to a hostel for liberated slaves, but Mr. Makeppo recalls that one of his brothers, who had the name Wainwright given him by the white men stayed with Livingstone to the day of his death. LIVINGSTONE’S DEATH. Biographies of the explorer confirm the fact that a native of this name formed one of the little party of devoted followers who were with him when he died, and who brought his, embalmed body down to the coast. Makeppo was sent to England ano became cook to a family near Hereford, and with whom he remained 28 years. He was afterwards employed at the Claredon Hotel, Oxford, and then attracted the notice of a Mr. Vanner, who about thirty years ago took him on at his house, Beechcroft, (jhislehurst, as an odd-job man in the garden. There he has remained ever since.