Raila Odinga's final march as the People's President comes home to rest

Down the way, where the land hugs the lake, Raila Odinga was on Sunday delivered to his ancestors, and to the first people he ever knew when he arrived in the world he was now departing.

After a long day of exaltation and political squabbling, and under a scorching Bondo sky, the family retreated to the Kang’o ka Jaramogi, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga’s homestead, to see off a man who was as much the people’s as he was theirs.

Military pallbearers, said to be the rank of Major, ringed his grave as the final rites were performed. Had Raila ever been president, the highest civilian rank, then the pallbearers would have consisted of general staff, Majors General, to be precise. The premiership attracted the same honour as those accorded to a deputy president.

Amid an unparalleled outpouring of grief, Raila, Kenya’s second prime minister, was lowered to rest beside his father. Unlike the elder Odinga, whose remains are sheltered inside a mausoleum, Raila’s grave is largely unshaded. But it is doubtful that he will mind the midday sun shining above him on brighter days.

The former premier loved to sing Harry Belafonte’s Jamaica Farewell, and crescendoed at the second part of its first line: Where the sun shines daily on the mountaintop. 

Safely away from the towering trees crowding his father’s homestead, there will be plenty of sunshine for him, perhaps until he, too, gets a mausoleum in his honour.

Not so much for his family, shattered by Raila’s reunion with his forebearers. They shed tears for a man they had heartily surrendered to the people for much of his adult life. For much of their entire lives. A man who claimed an enduring place in the hearts of many Kenyans, a grander crown than the presidency, which eluded him five times, could offer.

On the eve of Mashujaa Day, set aside to celebrate the country’s heroes, a Kenyan icon had earlier been praised for his immeasurable contribution to country in a sombre service that blended Anglican and military traditions at a university in Bondo named after his father.

In attendance were the dignitaries he rubbed shoulders with, an endless list of politicians who regarded him as a mentor, some of whom fought over what the old man’s death wish regarding the future of his party had been, and the people, Raila’s people, who, perhaps, worshipped him more in death than they had in life. More significantly, a crestfallen family, most of whom wore some shade of black, who thought their father would always be with them.

The ceremony itself underscored the vacuum Raila had left. It missed out on the tributes only he could give, those from friends that could roll out a person’s entire life. 

But it offered details about Raila’s health in his last days, with accounts from the president and his allies suggesting his afflictions were more serious than family members initially admitted. Kisii Governor Simba Arati had hinted at this when he revealed that an ailing Raila had contemplated seeking treatment in China before settling for India.

Raila’s life

His recollection that President William Ruto had said he wouldn’t “gamble” with Raila’s life was the tell-tale signal that there had been serious concerns about Raila’s well-being, as the President would later admit in his eulogy, which offered a clearer picture of the situation.

He said he had been concerned about Raila’s health after seeing him weak, with his voice subdued owing to unspecified medication he had been taking. They discussed overseas treatment options in Germany and China and India after Raila twice did checkups in the United Arab Emirates.

Raila had shown improvement, he would say, until the morning of his passing, when he got a text from Oburu, informing him the former premier was critically ill. That had been around 6.45 am, and he would make frantic calls to establish a fuller picture.

“In about 10 minutes, Oburu called and said it seems Baba has left us,” a sullen Ruto said. “He wasn’t conclusive.”

The news was conclusive, and Raila’s daughter Winnie would later inform him, saying that he had suffered a huge blow from the death.

He had spent minutes saying they had reconciled after a bitter contest for the presidency in 2022, following an olive branch he extended.

“I want to right the wrongs that have been done to you in our nation,” he remembered telling Raila, before blowing his trumpet on a bunch of issues, like policies he said were bearing fruit.

That had followed a script played out by Ruto’s allies within Raila’s Orange Democratic Movement, who were unabashedly eager for a coalition with Ruto. Raila had given mixed signals about his association with the Head of State, but with his death, pro-government lawmakers opened their arms wide.

In the intervening period, however, they had maintained their rivalry, with Ruto often chiding Raila for trying to force a handshake with street protests, which saw the former premier grow accustomed to being tear-gassed.

Raila had recently firmed up his Anglican belief by being confirmed at Canterbury and joining the communion. Had time allowed, Bishop David Kodia, who ought to have presided over the ceremony, said, there would have been a Holy Communion service.

He had been baptised as a child in an African name as his father, hypnotised by pan-African ideals, shunned Western names.

Big man

Earlier, Raila’s family had tried their best to put into words the significance of a man very much indescribable.

“They had written a speech for me,” barely holding back tears, Winnie Odinga, in whose arms she said Raila had died, said during the service at the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology (JOOUST) grounds. Then, she sighed: “I have nothing to say,” she said.

She had said plenty in the few Dholuo words she recited when she described her late father as a lion. The lion of Bondo.

At the Nyayo Stadium on Friday, she had said Raila was her superhero. She had said she and her three siblings (the late Fidel, Rosemary, and Raila Jr) were the luckiest to have Raila for a father.

“The king is dead. Long live the crown,” she would eventually tell the crowd of thousands attending the service.

Ida, stronger than most widows would be, had a lot on her chest. She would admit she had never wanted a politician for a husband, preferring, instead, professionals in fields like science. Raila, despite being the son of a politician, had not struck her as one.

“He was an engineer of calm demeanour and reflective character,” Ida read out a eulogy for Raila. “Little did I know I was marrying a political engineer.”

Given the chance for a do-over, Ida added, she would still choose the man who made her a mother. A sweetheart whose time in detention and exile she said had tested the family, whom she was surrendering to “Raila, friends, patriots, and family who went before him.” Surrendering him “for eternity and all ages.”

Rosemary, Raila’s elder daughter, said she had felt special that Raila believed in her and listened to her, pushing her to be the best she could be.

“Search for what makes you better and stronger. That’s what Baba would want us to do,” she said.

Raila Jr said he would miss many things about him, he said after paying homage to Raila’s staff. As others spoke of things that would pass as more profound, it was the simplest things that wowed Junior about his father.

“He has left us with vitendawili,” Junior said about the riddles Raila shared with the masses to pass political messages. “We will miss them.”

Raila was Jakom (Chairman) and Agwambo (the mysterious one) and Baba to Kenyans. To family, he was so much more. Oburu Oginga, his elder brother, said he had lost his best friend and confidant. His “everything”.

“I will never have another friend like Raila,” Oburu, now chosen to lead his brother’s Orange Democratic Movement, told a crowd of the more than 20,000 people that had trooped from Kenya’s different corners to JOOUST.

Oburu would recount Raila’s more cheeky childhood, which painted the contradictions that defined Raila, earning him the name “Agwambo,” the mysterious one. He talked about Raila being a disciplined child, but defying Jaramogi’s directive to pick cotton at their farm as a child.

“Don’t you know how hard it is to pick cotton?” Oburu would recall his brother saying. “Why don’t you try it yourself?”

As attested also by his sister Wenwa Odinga, Raila had shown the same defiance to a teacher who wanted to be saluted for caning him, a character he carried on into his adulthood, confronting successive regimes as he did his teacher.

sacrifices

Just as she had lamented on Thursday at Raila’s Opoda Farm, Ruth Odinga, his sister, would complain that Kenyans had been ungrateful for Raila’s sacrifices. She had said before that her late brother had died knowing young Kenyans disliked him.

If that had been so, Raila could not have been more wrong, evident in the love with which his supporters from all across Kenya showered him.

On the eve of the burial day, some walked from Kisumu and Siaya. Others were ferried in buses from as far as Mombasa and Nairobi. Most of them spent the night at the grounds.

A light evening shower a day before had dampened the usually dusty ground beneath them, but it also brought in a biting chill, which had nothing on the mourners. The grand speakers mounted at the venue kept them dancing throughout the night.

They mostly sang gospel songs and dirges. More than a few wiped away teardrops from their eyes when Saul Sewe’s sang his Siso Oloya gi Dala, the title of a song that loosely translates to ‘I have an overwhelming longing to go home (heaven).’

They must have pictured Raila flying home, far high in heaven, as they reflected on the lyrics: Koro ere gi ma di mona donjo e dala? Koro ere gi ma di geng’na (What would prevent me from going through heaven’s gates? What would stop me?

If there had been anything that would stop Raila, then their love for him, expressed in its rawest, purest form, would be enough to plead a compelling case for the 80-year-old.

There had been as many as 2,000 security personnel sent out to ensure all would go well, a police officer told the Standard. Given how chaotic the last few days had been, there was no room for error. Horseback riders, too, were deployed.

There were no disruptions, just passionate grieving, with Ida’s sustained pleas that her husband be accorded a dignified send-off eventually honoured.

Military officers, dogs in tow, conducted a security sweep a few minutes to 6am, as the crescent moon retreated, and the sun rose to usher in the darkest day for many attending the funeral.

And then miniature flags were distributed, which would be waved in respect of a man who gave up his freedom for nearly a decade for defending democracy.

At 9.42am, President William Ruto, his predecessor Uhuru Kenyatta, former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, and Siaya Senator Oburu, sauntered into the ground and paid their respects. 

His family had gone through the entrance flanked on both sides by Raila’s portrait. They had bowed in honour of a man each of them said had found time to attend to their respective needs.

“Agwambo has been buried well,” a mourner, who secured a front-row seat at the public tent, said in Dholuo. “Raila has been buried like a president.”

This was much the message from most of Raila’s allies. The opposition veteran had never received such honours in life. It never had mattered. Among his supporters, it wouldn’t have mattered even if the late prime minister hadn’t been accorded the honour of a state funeral. They would give Raila his flowers in death as they had in life. They would mourn him, as they did, like none else before him had ever been mourned.

Raila’s send-off featured lots of changed plans, none unjustified. As a death wish, Raila had reportedly wanted to rest beside his mother, Mary Juma, with whom he was separated in 1982 when Raila was detained over links to the abortive coup that sought to depose the late President Daniel Moi.

They were parted by his mother’s death in 1984, but Raila, still detained, was denied the chance to see her off. Raila had, perhaps, been dying to finally catch up with the first person he ever knew. His mother.

The decision to rest Raila next to his father, villagers had said, had been Oburu’s and endorsed by the family. The reasons for this move varied among the different accounts. Some said there was little space besides his mother, where other family members lie, for Raila. Others said that there was no better place to bury him than beside a man who had held his hand as a boy, who Raila had emulated too well to the point of possibly surpassing his influence.

Jaramogi’s funeral

It made sense, as did the fact that retired Bishop Joseph Otieno Wasonga, the same person who preached at Jaramogi’s funeral, preached at his.

He had also wanted to be interred within 72 hours of his passing, as Luo elders were traditionally buried, ostensibly to minimise the disruption he was sure his death would cause. That was extended by 24 hours to allow as many people as possible to pay their last respects.

His body was initially to be viewed at Parliament, where he would be lying in State, but the venue was too small for the eager supporters seeking to say their goodbyes to a man whose calming, hoarse voice had been silenced.

Raila was to spend the night in his Karen home. That, too, was changed owing to the suspected disruption, as was an initial plan to have Raila first enter his Bondo home before being laid out for viewing on Saturday.

There were no changes in the way Raila was to be mourned. Like a hero returning home. After decades of conquering the big city, where he served as Lang’ata MP for more than two decades, he was coming back to the bushy land of his boyhood.

At 4.52pm, six feet down went the man considered larger than life. His resting place, mostly rocky, had proven too hard for grave diggers to crack with their handy tools. Only an excavator could do the job. Only a “tinga” could prepare Tinga’s final home.

A 17-gun salute, two fewer than a Head of State would receive, rang out for a man once condemned as a coup-plotter, with the Last Post, a mournful bugle call used mostly in the Commonwealth to honour soldiers and Heads of State, and the National Anthem played for him.

The grave that swallowed the Enigma whole could not drown his spirit, very much alive in a family that would receive the flag draped around his coffin and lay wreaths on their loved one’s grave.