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The certificate doesn’t say “Mombasa, Kenya” or “Mombasa, Zanzibar,” it just says “Mombasa.”

Good point.

At the bottom it says for the Coast Province of Kenya as of the 17th of February, 1964 anyway.

The very little I've been able to attempt to research on this shows a connection going back to Sept. 08 of Joshua Simon Oduya to McCain and this issue.

I'm still leery of the font style that is on the form it's self, too modern imo, but I am far from an expert.

I posted this response on another thread, but I think it has relevance here--and the more I think about it, the more it makes sense.

After looking at the disputed document more carefully, I'm not as concerned about the "Republic of Kenya" issue. There may be an easy and straightforward explanation for that objection to its authenticity.

The explanation requires a proper definition of the word "entry."

Think of a form as having two components: (1) standard boilerplate headings and verbiage that never vary, and (2) manually inputted information that is entered in the appropriate spaces and blocks on the form.

If you read the document carefully, the attestation of the registrar is that it is a certified "true copy of the entry recorded in the Birth Register."

In other words, it is a true copy of the "entry" in the birth register. It is clearly not a copy of the birth register itself (or portion of it) in which the information was originally entered.

It would work this way: the original document--the birth register--exists but we have not seen it. We may assume it is in the proper form for 1961 (that is, not on "Republic of Kenya" form heading). Its "entry" logically and arguably means all the information that was entered--inputted manually--on the birth register, not the birth register (or portion of it) itself.

In 1964, to make a certified true copy of the "entry" from the birth register the registrar would take the then-current form (showing "Republic of Kenya" form heading inasmuch as the Republic of Kenya was then in existence and its forms would be used) and copy the entry (the manually entered information) from the birth register onto the new stand-alone form.

The resulting certified true copy would therefore comprise the original entry (manually inputted information) from the pre-Republic of Kenya birth register copied onto a post-Republic of Kenya form.

Please note that on the disputed document next to the block marked "signature of registrar" it does NOT show a signature, but rather the typed name "E.F. Lavander." This is another clue. Remember, this was in an era when photocopies as we know of them today were exceedingly rare. The first primitive Xerox-style copier wasn't even available before 1959. The vast majority of certified true "copies" were painstaking hand transcriptions of the manually inputted information copied over from original sources.

That's why E.F. Lavender's type-written name appears next to that block--not his actual signature. The registrar was simply certifying that the signature on the birth register was that of E.F. Lavender. The registrar didn't have access to the technology needed to make a photocopy of the original birth register. By entering the typewritten name of E.F. Lavender, the registrar was certifying that he had seen the signature and it was that of E.F. Lavender.

This isn't necessarily the correct explanation. But I believe it is a plausible and logical explanation.