By Wahome Thuku
THIS November, I mark 15 years since I lost my Mother. She died in 2005 aged 75. Today she would be 90 years, just 3 years older than the Very First Lady Mama Ngina Kenyatta who was born on 24th June 1933.
The first time I met Mama Ngina was at the Mama Ngina Children’s Home in Nairobi when she had visited to celebrate Christmas with the destitute children many years ago. The last time I saw her as July 2017 when she visited our church in Kitengela ahead of the general elections.
I have friends who work in very close circles with her and they tell me that Mama Ngina is this lady who you pass in the corridors totally unnoticed. Even in her own businesses, she behaves like the mother she is, to the workers.
Another friend tells me that during the campaigns in Gatundu Mama Ngina would stop in small campaign rallies to listen to candidates. And she would stand at the far back, to avoid attracting attention. Well those are stories.
The point is this, you would have to be a juvenile or a total novice to draw Mama Ngina into your stupid political rhetoric. I know all Mothers must be respected but there are those mothers who are politicians or political animals who are always ready and willing to go into the mud with any pig.
Mama Ngina is a totally different person. She never gives out her opinion, she doesn’t involve herself. One time I heard her on radio saying that when her husband died he never left her with any money. That she put all her mind and time into raising her children. Even that interview itself was very rare.
So when you insult Mama Ngina, you touch the heart of the Kikuyu nation and the whole nation and it doesn’t take long for you to realize it..
You may insult Uhuru Kenyatta he is a politician and he may pick up the fight with you. When you draw in Mama Ngina, it become’s a different matter.
Her demeanor, character and reservation fights for her. The moment you pull her name into a dirty political debate, you realize its only a matter of time before you find yourself having to apologize. Because those like me who call her mother, even for the fact of being my mother’s age mate, wont forgive you easily.
Anonymous says
there is nothing special about the woman and nobody should pitch for her if at all she was abused.
zombies are now pitching the loudest in seeking none existing apologies: they should be on the street demanding the looted COVID-19 by ……………..
If at all she was an example, Kenya should not be having the present division an and exclusion and forming a BBI to unit nothing but cause division and creating room for weaklings and protection all the loots stashed in mt Kenya including all the COVID-19 loots.
Garbage in and garbage out as this primitive article pitching on nothing.
Elvis says
This sort of arrogance has cost you presidency.
Anonymous says
When you have to demand respect, ask yourself why you’ve lost it and apologize, make amends before it can be restored to you.
The political culture of thuggery, betrayal, blackmail and looting from the public by those in high offices is nothing to demand respect for.
Respect is best accorded where integrity rules but do we have anyone in Kenyan politics that can lay claim to being a man or woman of integrity?
When the executive call the judiciary crooks forgetting the park of crooks in the executive and parliament where no day passes without a report of corruption selectively investigated depending on your political inclinations measured by either your kinship, ability to share out the loot with who is who in government or deep state mafia and/or support for a non-starter BBI handshake hoodwinking agenda already dividing Kenya rather than uniting Kenyans, then who can see that we’re lazily heading to political and economic abyss even before the next elections that they’re making a lot of noise about to cover up the looting by politically correct relatives and keep citizens from questioning the already failed four point development legacy agenda?
My mother is a happy lady in her old age because she did not grab anybody’s land, has never killed anybody’s child, is not a witch, struggled to feed us, educate us, never stole from anyone, has no ill-gotten wealth to brag over and no fears even if death beckons having kept her faith and lived to her 90th birthday.
Can every Kenyan say the same of his/her mother and if so why do we get gittery at the reminder that we have mothers? Nature dictates that because we have mothers, we also have fathers and if you’re not happy about your mother then you should also be unhappy about your father because he was your mother’s best choice for your conception unless you were a product of rape.
What parameters do we use to be proud of our parents and does that explain anything about the corruption cases in Kenya? When we use our families including mother-in-laws to steal from the public, where is the society heading if not total moral decadence and demented personalities?
Have we accepted that the society belongs to the dishonest and every parent has to train his children to be dishonest? To what extent can the current run away corruption in government be seen as a product of the enhanced lessons learnt by the current crop of leaders from the Kenyatta and Moi regimes where they used to clap for the looters by the roadside for handouts while made to lose on class time-tables? What picture of life did YK92 leave in the minds of the youth then with some of the beneficiaries campaigning as role models for Hustlers? What is “hustling” as defined by the Oxford dictionary?
Kenyans instead of making noise over our mothers, we need consider how to reclaim our moral consciousness individually and as a people and not tribally corrupt enclaves.
See in me what you would like to see of yourself. If you’re corrupt, don’t expect me not to be because we go to the same supermarkets, my child has to get education, medical care, food, clothing and shelter as you steal from my taxes, Is this the way to go and for how long?
Where is equity in the revenue allocation push after Sessional Paper no. 65 marginalized certain regions in Kenya and by ethnic greed failed to effect the expected trickle down effect.
Why is the sinecure Commission for Intergration and Cohesion not concerned about Hon. Kangata’s statement depicting those opposed to the contested revenue allocation bill as enemies of Mount Kenya communities thus pursuing a tribal agenda?
The rot is massive and only best captured by the author of the book “AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE”. We are blindly in the grip of a revolution that even the BBI can only buy time with but is imminent because we’re not ready to open our closets full of past ills against the country and only bent on abuse of power to avoid the truth.
The callousness can be seen in the governors threat to media houses on reporting of corruption in the county looting clubs. Bure kabisa!
Sixa says
Kizungu mingi, bila lolote
Anonymous says
Pole. Mama angepeleka wewe shule, hungelalamika.