What made Raila the man he turned out to be

The invite was irresistible. Grandfather Justo urgently wanted to meet his grandchildren. The venue of this unusual family reunion was Industrial Area Prison in Nairobi. This is where a three-year-old Raila first had a taste of prison.

Justo had killed a drinking mate, Ahomo, after a drunken taunt that he would surrender one of his four wives to him. He was tried and convicted and feared that he would be executed. It was at this point that the distraught grandfather requested his daughter, Mary Ajuma, Raila’s mother, to take his grandsons, Raila, Oburu and another cousin to the prison.

Fate momentarily smiled at Justo. He successfully appealed. Freedom was imminent but Justo’s foes were infuriated. You see,  before he was jailed, Raila’s grandfather had been the president of a tribunal that listened to local disputes and his return meant that he would retake the chieftain to the chagrin of Amoth Awira.

Justo’s family learnt through the grapevine of a plot to eliminate him to ensure that he never reclaimed this position. The antidote, the family was advised to seek a medicine man who would prescribe a potion potent enough to protect the chief and his claim to the seat of power. At the time, relatives were allowed to take food to prisoners, and the portion was delivered by his wife.

“Needless to say,  it was poisoned and he died. My grandmother was completely distraught. She stripped naked, weeping and wailing that she was responsible for her husband’s death. She was barely restrained from committing suicide and she never recovered from the incident, which haunted her for the rest of her life.” Raila wrote in his autobiography, The Flame of Freedom, published in 2013.

The prison, Raila would soon enough learn that in its literal and symbolic manifestations, would dictate the rhythms of his life and the future of his family. Young as he was, the sour aftertaste of prison would hang around him like a ordure for the rest of his life.  

But this was the first in a string of hard lessons for the boy Jaramogi had nicknamed Aluo that would toughen him into the vessel fit for the tumultuous waters destiny had charted for him. 

He had earlier lost his baby teeth, not through the loving hands of his mother but to a boyhood prank that delivered his chin to a dried tree stump after he tumbled down from of a mango tree he had climbed to prove his prowess. His chin required several stitches, grin toothless for a time and bear the scar of his boyhood.

Although Jaramogi had resigned from his teaching job as principal at Maseno Veterinary school two years after Raila’s birth, he still retained an iron grip on the boys, demanding that they run 300 metres every day at 6.30am followed by some squats.

Growing up at Kaloleni Estate in Kisumu was fun as it opened Raila and Oburu’s worldview as they interacted with peers from different communities, races and religious creeds.

Racial discrimination at the time was rife and Raila had to enroll at Komulo, the only African School at the time. Their age difference notwithstanding, Raila was enrolled at the same time with Oburu, who was 15 months older. 

His scholarship in Kisumu came to an abrupt end when he and his brother were transferred to Maranda school in Bondo ostensibly to deepen their cultural understanding and the ways of their forefathers. At the time, Jaramogi had risen in stature to be a prolific businessman in Kisumu as well the Ker of Luo Union of East Africa association.

In Bondo, the boys had not only to repeat classes but also march six miles every day to and from school. Their classmates did not know their dates of birth and used Raila’s and Oburu’s dates of birth as a reference point. It was not unusual to find children who were ten years older registering as  Raila’s age-mates.

It is from Maranda that Raila was yanked off at the age of 17, in June 1962, and unceremoniously handed over to the various Jaramogi trusted allies who delivered him to Kisumu, Nairobi, Dar-es Salaam and finally Cairo without a Kenyan passport.

At the time, Jaramogi was in Yugoslavia, where he had traveled on an international passport issued by Ghana and Nyerere to attend a non-aligned movement.

To reach his destination, Germany, for further studies because no Kenyan school could admit any of Jaramogi's children, Raila, like some of the Biblical figures he was so fond of,  had to sojourn in the land of Pharaoh. He had a feel of the wilderness for two months, unlike the children of Israel, who roamed the desert for 40 years.

The journey exposed Raila to the world of international politics where he hobnobbed with kings, Pan-Africans as well as pioneer African presidents such as Julius Nyerere and Abdel Gamel Nassir.

Raila has chronicled this nurturing stage in his autobiography.

That Jaramogi had a wide network of local, East African and European networks is evident from his ability to arrange Raila’s journey from Kenya without a passport or visa. This is a journey that started in Bondo through Tanzania, Egypt to East Germany. He met some students, such as Moses Keino, who would serve as a Member of Parliament and Speaker of the National Assembly. 

Raila’s first taste of detention took place when he was only 17, in Egypt on his way to the promised land. On account of lack of polio vaccination, he was held in quarantine for some days before he could be allowed to travel out in a cargo ship. Ironically, while he was quarantined in Cairo, Jaramogi passed by Egypt and ultimately tutored him on the importance of his detention. 

He was to recall that his father advised him to take heart for the detention, unaware that Jaramogi and his son would at different times of their political careers be detained by the government in Kenya. 

Raila soon learnt that the Atlantic Ocean was wilder and wider than Nam Lolwe and the Nyamgondho spirits. He needed to be baptised in the ways of the sea so as to confuse the spirits that made sea vessels disappear without a trace in Bermuda Triangle. To the sea creatures and spirits, he became the sea needle that could slice through the waters. This,  Raila and the other seafarers in his ship learnt was to ensure their safe passage.

Like his father, Raila acted like the glue that held the many parties he founded together and a community larger than the Luo Association of East Africa. He was indeed the people’s President.