A woodland clearing squeezed between two industrial estates may seem like an odd place to find a king holding court.
Especially when the court in question amounts to little more than a couple of second-hand tents pitched beside a modest campfire.
Nevertheless, here sits the self-styled King Atehene, lord of the Kubalans, a lost tribe of African Scots who once ruled the Highlands apparently – and he has come to reclaim what is rightfully his.
But lately, things haven’t been going terribly well on that front. The king and his queen, Nandi, along with their ‘handmaiden’ Asnat, have struggled to make much headway in persuading others to cede Scotland to them.
So far, any efforts at state diplomacy have been met with a certain froideur among local officialdom. When the royal entourage first settled on council land near the town of Jedburgh, Roxburghshire, they were rather unceremoniously slapped with an eviction notice.
Then, a mysterious fire (still the subject of a police investigation) engulfed their original encampment, forcing them into a hasty relocation to a privately owned forest where they are now squatting in another makeshift camp.
Yet, His Majesty remains undaunted. And so, it is in these faintly surreal surroundings that Atehene deigns to grant an audience, wearing a splendid crown of intertwined sticks, coloured string and crow’s feathers along with kingly robes fashioned from a pair of recycled curtains.
It’s fair to say, too, that his throne bears more than a passing resemblance to a polyester camping chair covered with a leopard print blanket. Still, needs must.
He will speak, he says, of his quest to attain the Promised Land he claims was stolen from his people when they were all sent in exile 400 years ago – but only after he is brought an ‘offering’ of Irn-Bru and shortbread.
The self-styled King Atehene, lord of the Kubalans, a lost tribe of African Scots who once ruled the Highlands apparently, has set up court in a woodland clearing squeezed between two industrial estates in Jedburgh, writes Gavin Madeley
Queen Nandi, King Atehene and their handmaiden Asnat have struggled to make much headway in persuading others to cede Scotland to them
He is keen on offerings as it helps to keep the wolf from the door, just as he is keen on visits to the local Co-op as its free customer wi-fi helps him spread his message to follow him as the messiah.
Currently, that following numbers three, including himself. But the king isn’t bothered. ‘We are a people already,’ he says. ‘The tribe is scattered around the four corners of the Earth, but I am their leader, I am their king, to bring them back home. So the number of three is just a representation of what has started.’
Atehene’s elaborate origin story runs something like this: his ancestors were Hebrew, descended from the Bible’s King David, he says. They built Scotland as a sacred land, but angered God when they forgot their heritage and followed the customs of their naughty English neighbours. This made God very angry and caused them to be cast out into captivity 400 years ago by Elizabeth I, with some taken to Africa and others to the Caribbean where ‘they lost their identity as the true natives of Scotland’.
‘But there was a prophecy, given by our God, that after 400 years they shall come back to the land they used to own,’ he adds. ‘And the 400 years is over and they are returning back to their motherland.’
One day, he vows, he will live in a castle: ‘It’s not a dream, it’s a promise.’ He talks unhurriedly in a whisper, as his queen gazes up adoringly, and Asnat fusses about his crown, teasing his hair. The women speak only when he permits it.
‘The Kingdom of Kubala has suffered trials and tribulations at the hands of authorities, who do not understand or tolerate,’ says their King. ‘The Kingdom of Kubala cannot be destroyed, for we are helped by the creator of the heavens and the earth, our God… we follow the laws of the creator.
‘Everything belongs to the ones who made it. We do not believe that any authority owns the land. The earth belongs to the Father.’
There is something Pythonesque about this rush of verbal porridge, talk of messiahs and quests and demands for gifts (including paints, canvases, frankincense, myrrh, even Bluetooth speakers), and many locals have clearly dismissed them as harmless cranks.
The trio claim they are part of a lost tribe of Hebrews, whose ancestors were kicked out of Scotland when Queen Elizabeth I deported native black Jacobites
Behind their posturing, however, the Daily Mail has unearthed dark secrets about this unlikely ‘royal’ family.
Seven of the couple’s offspring – they are believed to have three together and four are from her previous marriage – remain behind in England having been taken into care amid allegations of child neglect.
Mystery also surrounds Asnat, an American whose real name is Kaura Taylor. Her family claim she arrived in Scotland with a baby, although there was no sign of an infant at the camp. It begs serious questions as to who really are the King and Queen of Kubala? And why they have a burning need to find a ‘lost Scottish tribe’, when their own family appears lost to them?
The king insists he is directed at all times by his creator, who knows why he is in Jedburgh: ‘Tomorrow if the calling comes that we should be in the Highlands, we will be in the Highlands. He tells me where I should go and I go. He tells me what I should do and I do. Yesterday, he told me just to dance, and I dance,’ he said.
He says it was his creator who told him when to leave behind his past life as Kofi Offeh, a 36-year-old Ghanaian opera singer and entrepreneur. He refuses to say exactly when this was ‘because it’s sacred’.
‘Some things are kept as a mystery, such as the Holy Grail. As I have said, I am the Holy Grail.’
He throws this out there quite nonchalantly as he chews on a twig. But the vagueness returns when I ask him about his past and that of his 43-year-old queen, once known as Jean Gasho.
It’s only after carrying out our own enquiries that the Mail has been able to uncover the disturbing truth behind the couple’s bizarre claims. Ms Gasho is the daughter of Never Gasho, a wealthy and well-connected Zimbabwean businessman, farmer and jazz musician. As a bright and articulate 17-year-old, she moved to the UK in 2000, claiming her father used his contacts at the Zimbabwean embassy to help start her new life.
Thought to have graduated from Edge Hill University in Lancashire as a nurse in 2003, she married a fellow student on her course in 2003 and the couple had four children together before their relationship broke down. Ms Gasho filed for divorce in 2013.
She first came across Kofi Offeh a year later in 2014. An opera-singing prodigy from Ghana, Offeh’s tenor voice had caught the ear of the producers of BBC World Service’s Focus On Africa.
Plump, bespectacled and softly spoken – he was nicknamed Nino, or ‘baby’ – Ms Gasho was in the audience when he performed at the Black Entertainment, Film, Fashion, Television and Sports Awards in London that year.
By now a troubled single mother, she was smitten by the ‘beautiful dark-skinned man with a voice of an angel’. After striking up a long-distance friendship, Offeh returned to the UK six months later and they became a couple, now believed to have had three children of their own.
Ms Gasho became a columnist with the Modern Ghana online news service, and Mr Offeh began a short-lived career in marketing, setting up a firm called Black British Entertainment in a flat in Milton Keynes, which failed to lift off.
The couple settled in Stockton-on-Tees, Co. Durham, where Ms Gasho claims her husband became a wealthy buy-to-rent landlord, accumulating a portfolio of 13 properties, to which she gave artistic makeovers, earning them £20,000 a month.
On the professional networking site Clay Earth, he described himself as ‘the King of the North at Northern Palace’ and a ‘serial entrepreneur and luxury investor’.
Yet things were already going awry in their private life and Ms Gasho’s writings chart a descent from critical thinking around Christianity into unquestioning adherence to scripture.
By 2019, Ms Gasho went public with the couple’s desire to bring a second woman into their marriage, claiming her spouse is descended from King David.
Referring to herself as Nino’s Queen, she wrote: ‘My husband will celebrate the end of 400 years of slavery by taking another wife. This is a fulfilment of prophecy. It will all be done according to scripture.’
Ateheni refuses to speak about his aim to attain the Promised Land until he is brought an ‘offering’ of Irn-Bru and shortbread
Mystery also surrounds Asnat, an American whose real name is Kaura Taylor. Her family claim she arrived in Scotland with a baby, although there was no sign of an infant at the camp
Applicants, aged 25 to 35, were invited to email in a CV and send in a fee of £500 if a single mother or £350 if childless. Virgins could be a candidate for free.
There were further signs Ms Gasho’s mental health was beginning to unravel, and it appeared to crash after the death of her beloved father from Covid-19 in 2021. Police and social services were called to the family home after she live-streamed herself making artwork, covered in paint, surrounded by screaming children. The couple split and she moved into a comfortable apartment in Newcastle to recover.
The pair reunited but had now convinced themselves of their regal and divine heritage. Bemused locals would often watch as they took to the pavement in tribal dress outside their scruffy flat above a fast-food shop shouting ominous warnings about the end of days for unbelievers.
Behind their front door, daubed with crudely painted Biblical messages, the authorities were concerned about the goings on. In 2023, the couple were arrested on suspicion of child cruelty.
Both were remanded in custody but were later freed. They denied the charges, which were later dropped.
In one court submission, seen by the Mail, Offeh revealed details of psychiatric treatment he had received for a psychotic episode in November 2021, when he was detained at Roseberry Park Hospital, near Middlesbrough.
Ms Gasho has since claimed the court charges were orchestrated to protect the Coronation of King Charles in 2023 and the pair maintain they were the victims of racist persecution.
‘The story of my children is simple,’ she said. ‘They were kidnapped from me.’
She claims she was singled out for her faith and for being black by ‘people who think they’re superior, who think because they’re white, they’re the ones who define what motherhood is’. She said: ‘The ultimatum was put down your faith, put down your practices, put down your culture.
‘But no, I will not put down my goals for white people.’
In time, Mr Offeh said they have faith that once day their God will return them. ‘We know our children are in captivity. But I am not going to succumb to any white judge to bring my children back. It would be an abomination. They shall bring my children back because of the power which is within us.’
They have also maintained their menage-a-trois with Ms Taylor. Both women, the king said, ‘belong to the King of Kubala. They are under my authority. They are my wives and they perform their duty.’
He points out Jacob had two wives and two concubines, while King David had ‘so many wives’. Is there any allowance in their religion for a woman to take more than one husband?
‘It is an abomination,’ snapped Queen Nandi quickly. A woman is made for the man and not the other way round.’ That’s a no, then.
Nandi, whose real name is Jean Gasho, and Atehene (Kofi Offeh) were arrested on suspicion of child cruelty
Both women, the king said, ‘belong to the King of Kubala. They are under my authority. They are my wives and they perform their duty’
Ms Taylor, a young single mother, was reported missing, allegedly along with her infant daughter, by her family in Texas in May. She says that she has cut all ties with her mother whom she alleged suffered from serious mental health problems, adding that ‘as a fully grown adult’ she could live with whoever she wanted.
I ask about the baby. Suddenly uncomfortable, Asnat replies: ‘That’s a bit invasive. There’s a lot of speculation about whether or not I have children, whether or not I will have children. Every child in Kubala is a child of the queen, and any child of the queen is a child of the king. That’s as much of an answer as I will give you.’
The Kubala group is happier posting videos on social media of their exploits, including bathing in a nearby stream, praying by a river wearing nothing but foraged leaves, sweeping the ground with handmade brooms, and chanting by a fire under the stars.
In one historically illiterate film shot at Culloden, near Inverness, Jean claims the battle of 1746, in which the Jacobite army of Bonnie Prince Charlie was routed, was fought 400 years ago and was in fact a defeat of native black Highlanders by the English. Speaking at the site, she said: ‘The true Jacobites were black people.’
That may come as a surprise to some venerable clan chiefs. For now, at least, their ancient lands are safe from the Kingdom of Kubala, which remains confined to a shabby red tent and a children’s paddling pool to bathe in, and reliant on the kindness of strangers to nourish body and soul.
Scottish Borders Council is no longer interested in pursuing legal action as they decamped from council land before court papers were lodged.
A spokesman said information about housing options and other support services was offered, adding: ‘As the group relocated to non-Council owned land, the responsibility for any future legal action now rests with the landowner. Along with Police Scotland we will continue to monitor the situation and if circumstances change, will take any appropriate and required action at that time.’
They may have a long wait. As summer gives way to colder, wetter months, King Atehene is not for moving yet: ‘We shall be very well and the world will testify how Kubala survived the winter in glorious style.’
Ultimately, this king wants his Highland castle. He better hope it’s not a castle made of sand.
