Both Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and last son Raila Amolo Odinga have made use of little talents.
Both started out as teachers with Jaramogi at Maseno High School and Raila at Nairobi University.
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But both did not allow the noble profession to tie them down. Jaramogi became obsessed with the next generation and Raila with political battles and election after election.
But both father and son had a lifestyle too.
Their ladies
In taste and style, I have looked at both Mama Ida in her youth and Mama Mary Odinga.
No matter how you look at them in terms of elegance, fashion and style, they both have it.
Both Raila and Odinga come off as men of great taste too.
In a way, the two ladies are alike in that they both walk tall and have poise. Mama Mary is the Queen mother and everything originates from her.
But I know Mama Ida, Raila’s wife, more than Mama Mary, Raila’s mum.
Mama Ida interviewed me with Jaramogi chairing the panel for a finance position at Spector EA. I was in such a shock to see Mzee for the first time at less than two metres away.
Thank God he changed the interview to Dholuo chat to ease my tension and barred all technical-jargoned questions.
When asked when I can take up the position, I told them I was closing the financial year for my employers and ethically would like to finish that.
The feedback I got from the panel was that Ida was impressed by my integrity.
So, Mama Ida values integrity. Unfortunately, I was barred from taking up the position.
Ivy League scholar
One of the Odinga was an Ivy League scholar. From the prestigious Maseno School to the dizzy heights of Alliance High School, Kikuyu, and to Makerere University.
This was a move from summit to summit of intuitions of learning.
Not many people went to Makerere University by then. In the whole of East Africa, that was the end of it all. Regardless of what you studied, Makerere was the citadel of higher learning.
But the younger Odinga went to college years later at a time when Nairobi University College was in existence. By then there was Dar es Salaam University as well.
Furthermore, the airlifts had opened our eyes to many top uuniversities all over the world and the novelty of university education had gone down.
Before university, Raila had crossed from Kisumu Union Primary School to Maranda Secondary School, a national secondary school. But Raila cut short his studies at Maranda in a way reminiscent of late Tom Mboya’s stint at St Mary’s School in Yala, Nyanza.
Raila then commenced studies in Germany, going through bridging courses before majoring in engineering at Leipzig University. In his choice to study engineering in a part of the world where engineering stands out as model of excellence, Raila was very brave.
Nobody takes engineering in that part of the world in order to sit behind a mahogany desk to pencil-push in a three-piece suit while waiting for Chinese or foreigners to come and roll up their sleeves and do real engineering for them.
To choose to plunge himself in such rigorous world and a fanatically perfect engineering culture and excel in a second language was as good as a Makerere education.
Soliciting red scholarships
After Makerere, Jaramogi joined as a lecturer at Maseno High School where he applied himself with a passion. A Maseno student testifies to Jaramogi’s desire for African students to excel and he used any means necessary to extract perfection from the African students.
He often sacrificed himself at the risk of losing everything just for others.
Laziness was driven out by corporal punishment. A notorious and sticky-fingered Ugenya pupil felt the fury of Jaramogi’s canes. Unfortunately, thieving is an illness and the pupil never stopped even when he became an envoy in later life.
Jaramogi acolytes littered the landscape of Independent Kenya.
Even in later life without chest-thumping, Jaramogi solicited red scholarships for young Kenyans in both the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, now Russia, and the People’s Republic of China.
So, Jaramogi was thrust into leadership at a very early age as a teacher.
Sacrifice and lost youth
At Maseno, Jaramogi led many overtures at parity among the African teaching staff and their European colleagues. So, confrontation with the Kenyan colonial administrations was inevitable.
Jaramogi also entered the foray of private sector and tried his hands at various business projects, among them Lolwe Bus Service. Jaramogi too ventured into Kisumu public transport that he named Podho Bus Service.
He also went about mass reorganisation of the Luo community into modern day economics and either relocated them in settlements or educated them on turning two fishes and bread to feed the multitudes.
As the founder of Luo Thrift and Trading Corporation (Lutitco), chairman Luo Union, then as Ker, a semi-spiritual Luo leader, some aspects of Jaramogi’s youthful life were snuffed out.
Indeed, some positions come with a prescription for habits and habitat. A semi-spiritual leader cannot crack banter, cannot laugh unabashed, cannot enjoy the intoxicant and must employ extreme restraint in daily lives; keeping a distance from sloth.
In fact, a semi-spiritual leader lives a very lonely monk-like lifestyle.
For Jaramogi too, he had a young family and an emerging tribesman looking for leadership of his people.
He thus missed many years in his roaring 30s and furious 40s due to these self-less commitments.
Grooming lieutenants
As founder and mentor in Luo Union, a political and social outfit, Jaramogi surrounded himself with young Turks. Among them former senator and now Governor of Siaya County, Senior Counsel James Aggrey Orengo, with a view to grooming them to take over when he is gone.
Luo Union was to champion the unity between the Luo people of the entire East Africa.
Earlier in 1957, Jaramogi stepped down from Ker of Luo because he acknowledged that a popular politician was too corrupt to be a Luo Ker. A Ker cannot womanise, drink and allow sluggishness to taint his name.
Even though Jaramogi was strait-laced, he never wanted a Luo semi-religious leadership to be assumed by popular politicians in the future. It is sad that we nowdays call any Tom, Dick and Harry politician a Ker. Jaramogi thus became the political spokesperson of the Luo.
Man of the people
Jaramogi was down-to-earth in his dressing and dietary care. He made it almost religious to mirror the common man by the roadside. He found it easy to enjoy nyoyo or boiled maize and beans at funeral meetings. And in the manner of his people, Jaramogi ended up with a generous home with four wives and 17 children.
Jaramogi also had no problem associating with a popular mass movement, the Legio Maria sect, an African-initiated church among the Luo of western Kenya.
Jaramogi did not choose this lifestyle for political expediency. For instance, Jaramogi lived in Jerusalem estate when I lived in Buru Buru estate and yet he had 10,000 times the means I had.
Dressed in regular Kinyasa at functions, Jaramogi was at ease washing his disciples’ feet like Jesus did.
I was once told by a lecturer that a leader can change the conscience of nation without a single law being passed. So, in all these, Jaramogi was simply with his followers.
His lifestyle message was sobering. “I am with you and like you. It is okay to wear Akala, poverty is no crime, and there is no shame in living in Eastlands, or travelling by train, but just don’t steal to travel by car.”
In other words, to Jaramogi, living in Eastlands or eating a humble meal at a funeral is okay. Jaramogi lived by what he preached. Travelling by train from Kisumu, living in Salem Nairobi (Jerusalem Eastlands), and like late Tanzanian President Mwalimu Nyerere preferring mahanya to upscale meals at Luo funerals.
But Jaramogi’s inability to lay down his hair and trade banter worked against him on the political stage. His dry-lecture responses to his political partner and later archrival President Jomo Kenyatta or political challenger Tom Mboya gave the impression that Jaramogi was coming from a weak angle.
What Jaramogi needed was to respond and not answer; just a response to defuse the answer was the best medicine. Something like then US presidential candidate Barack Obama did; turning around the apparent Black American preference for Senator Hillary Clinton with a simple retort, “Bill Clinton can only be considered a truly ‘first black president’ if he can dance!”
Both son and father have ranked well and have made good use of their talents.
But what is Raila’s answer to the human resource empowerment such as Jaramogi’s personal hunt for scholarships to China, Russia and Eastern Europe?
At 77 now, Raila still has time on his side to answer Jaramogi, who passed on in 1994 at 82.
Extracted from Odinga versus Odinga II, https://www.namlolwe-anecdotes.com/
