Childhood
He was born in the town of Kigoma in western Tanzania - what was then Tanganyika - on 4 October 1949 and was baptised Godfrey about two months later on Christmas day, 25 December 1949, as a member of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) among whose supporters was Scottish explorer and missionary-doctor, David Livingstone, of the London Missionary Society.1
Dr. Livingstone campaigned against slavery and the slave trade but also helped pave the way for the colonisation of Africa.2
According to his autobiography, Godfrey Mwakikagile was born at Kilimani Hospital and lived with his parents in one of the government houses in Mwanga, on a street with the same name, in the town of Kigoma when his father worked as a medical assistant. He later moved to Ujiji with his parents where his sister was born.
He was, according to his birth certificate, baptised by Reverend Frank McGorlick (from Victoria, Australia), a Scottish minister of the Church Missionary Society in Kigoma his parents belonged to. But he was brought up as a member of the Moravian Church at Kyimbila in Rungwe District in what was then the Southern Highlands Province in colonial Tanganyika, as he states in his books, Life in Tanganyika in The Fifties and My Life as an African: Autobiographical Writings. The pastor of Kyimbila Moravian Church was his great uncle, Asegelile Mwankemwa, who was the younger brother of his maternal grandmother.3
He moved to Rungwe District with his parents when he was 5 years old after living in different parts of Tanganyika - Kigoma, Ujiji, Kilosa, Morogoro, and Mbeya - where his father worked as a medical assistant for the British colonial government. According to his autobiography, his father also worked at the Amani Research Institute in Amani, in Muheza, Handeni, and Tanga before moving to Kigoma four months before Godfrey Mwakikagile was born. Rungwe was his parents' home district. Both were born and brought up in Rungwe District and were members of a tribe indigenous to that part of Tanzania.4
Rungwe District, ringed by misty blue mountains, is close to the border with Malawi and is located in the Great Rift Valley north of Lake Nyasa.
Godfrey Mwakikagile went to school in Tanzania and in the United States.
Tanganyika united with Zanzibar in 1964 to form Tanzania.
Read more about this topic: Godfrey Mwakikagile
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