Saying that he could “only speak of the rich values that Mr Powell taught us through the scouting movement”, Mr Anthony Gitonga, the international commissioner at the Kenya Scouts Movement, said the founder will remain a hero in Kenya, the protests notwithstanding. He was a lieutenant in the British army specialising in reconnaissance and scouting, and upon retirement moved to Nyeri, where he started the Scouts Movement in 1910. He died in 1941 and was buried in Nyeri town, where he had relocated permanently three years earlier. While Baden-Powell, his wife Olave and colonial soldiers’ graves are well kept, thousands of massacred Kenyan freedom fighters are buried in unmarked mass graves across Nyeri County. The Kenya Scouts Movement has been pushing to have Unesco declare Powell’s grave a World Heritage Site.

Source: Daily Nation June 13, 2020 03:00 UTC