ABSTRACT
Missionaries on the Kenya coast encountered few Africans hungrier for Christianity than fugitive slaves, or converts readier to "die for the Book." Fugitive slave converts lived disciplined lives and devoted themselves to building and farming rather than to idleness and drink. With the Church Missionary Society cleanly distanced from Fuladoyo in the British consul's eye, slave owners prepared an attack from the coast. Fuladoyo s survival also helped to ease conditions of servitude on the many Mazrui plantations in the Takaungu neighborhood. Takaungu town and the surrounding district had been developed by the junior Zaheri branch of the Mazrui family, after Seyyid Said drove them out of Mombasa in 1837. Slave plantations were becoming usufruct properties, while agricultural slaves were becoming tenant farmers. Mazrui ambitions were achieved in the sense that until 1895 Takaungu remained free of Busaidi and British interference in its internal affairs and unfettered as an exporter in the clandestine slave trade.
