Just past midday on August 22, 1978, ordinary programming was interrupted on the only radio station in the country back then to break news of the death of first President Mzee Jomo Kenyatta.
But less known is the rare drama that occurred immediately after the president died in his sleep at State House, Mombasa.
It began with two State House medical nurses assigned to keep an eye on the president noticing he had difficulties breathing.
They alerted First Lady Mama Ngina and called the doctor on duty at State House, Dr Wasunna, a heart specialist.
Coast Provincial Commissioner (PC) Eliud Mahihu was also informed and immediately went to State House.
As Dr Wasunna and the two nurses laboured to resuscitate the president, PC Mahihu dashed to fetch an oxygen cylinder from Mombasa’s Aga Khan Hospital and came back with another practitioner, Dr Pinto, also a cardiologist.
But just as they got back to the president’s bedroom, Dr Wasunna broke the bad news. The president was dead.
The two nurses made to disagree, arguing that he had previously been in the same situation but came back to life.
STRANGE NEWS
The doctor was firm: this time the president was gone — forever. Dr Pinto made his own check and confirmed as much.
But PC Mahihu wouldn’t believe the two doctors, highly rated as they were. He waited until the director of medical services in the Ministry of Health, Dr Eric Mngola, came in person to confirm the death, simply by feeling the president’s pulse!
The PC did the next ridiculous thing: he demanded each of the doctors separately write and sign a note confirming the death.
It was only after he was armed with the three signed notes that he telephoned his boss, the head of civil service, and the vice-president to pass the news.
More drama was to come. When the State-owned radio station was instructed to relay the news to the public, the director of broadcasting said it would only happen if the head of the civil service personally came on the line to give the orders. Nobody wanted to believe the president could die!
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It wasn’t without a reason. Years earlier, President Jomo Kenyatta had for days been in a coma after suffering a massive stroke.
Somehow the Nation got wind of it and reported the news. Soon after the newspaper was out, police raided Nation offices and arrested chief editor George Githii.
He was released hours later with a stern warning never again to publish anything to do with the health of the head of State.
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In his memoirs, first Kenyan head of civil service Duncan Ndegwa discloses that it is not once or twice Mzee Kenyatta went into a coma, but the State machinery plugged all holes to keep it a secret.
He reckons that even as Mzee Kenyatta’s eyesight increasingly declined — obviously on reason of advanced age — he would never be seen in public wearing glasses.
For him to read, the font size in his written speeches kept increasing until a page would take no more than two paragraphs.
The public never even got to know the old man had lost teeth long before he became president, and what they saw were dentures.
In another instance, a Cabinet minister in Jomo’s government, Dr Munyua Waiyaki — a medical practitioner — related to me an incident about a year before the president died when the world-famous South African-born heart surgeon, Dr Christiaan Barnard, came to the country and recommended a bypass heart operation him.
He recalled Mzee Kenyatta politely listening to the visiting surgeon. But as soon as he stepped out, the president whispered to Dr Waiyaki in vernacular: “Keere gagathiinje nyina ti nii! (Tell that little person to go do the operation on his mother, not on me).
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Every newsroom in Nairobi on the afternoon of Saturday, August 23, 2003, resembled a war-room.
Vice-President Michael Wamalwa had been pronounced dead shortly before noon. Yet no newsroom was ready with a backgrounder to accompany the news.
That had to be prepared as a matter of emergency.
At Nation Centre, editorial director Wangethi Mwangi personally took charge and worked the phones to summon his best “crack-shots”, most of whom were off duty.
In my case, I was to fly out to Abuja on a six o’clock flight the following morning. Then I saw Mr Mwangi’s call.
Knowing what to expect, my first instinct was to not pick up the phone. But then you only ignore the boss when you no longer need his job.
So I answered it. “Can you immediately report to the office,” he ordered without any preliminaries.
He didn’t allow me time to remind him that three days earlier he had okayed my trip to Nigeria and I was due to fly out very early in the morning.
I still remember how it was as we crammed the tiny editorial boardroom that afternoon to take assignments on what angles to give the Wamalwa story.
Being a Saturday afternoon and an off-duty day for many in the room, you can guess we hadn’t come from church.
The small room reeked of a distillery. All the same, we did a fantastic job, and as many viewers and readers agreed, NMG had the best coverage of Wamalwa’s demise.
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Minister’s uji ‘cure’
How come all newsrooms were caught flat-footed on the VP’s death? You may ask.
News about Wamalwa’s illness had been all over Nairobi over a year before his death. He had been in and out of hospital and the media reported about it.
But every time it happened, the family and the government strenuously insisted that all was “well” with the VP and the visits and admissions to hospital were for “routine” medical checks — whatever that is!
I remember the issue of preparing an advance obituary of Wamalwa — a common practice the world over — having come up during editorial planning meetings weeks before his death.
But the cramping-up and denials from the family and the State made us procrastinate until we were caught unprepared.
The most ridiculous of the denials, and remembered by many, is when the government dispatched to London a minister of State in the VP’s office, Mrs Linah Jebii Kilimo, to visit her boss at Wellington Hospital. Mark you, even the name of the hospital was meant to be a State secret!
On her return home, minister Kilimo angrily lectured the media for reporting that the VP was unwell yet in the morning she had been with him and “he took a whole bowl of uji (porridge)!”
In her knowledge of medicine — wherever she studied it — taking a bowl of uji is an indication that one is as fit as a fiddle!
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Eight months before Wamalwa died, his boss, President Mwai Kibaki, had been admitted in the same Wellington Hospital, after suffering injuries in a road accident at the Machakos-Mombasa Road junction during the 2002 presidential campaigns.
I still remember that evening on December 3 when the accident happened. The media was alerted and rushed to Nairobi Hospital, where Kibaki had been airlifted.
On arrival, hostile members of the Kibaki family and politicians who didn’t want the accident reported chased away the media, resulting in a physical confrontation, where journalists were assaulted and their equipment broken.
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That incident came back to mind in February this year when retired President Kibaki went to view the body of his predecessor, Daniel arap Moi, lying in state at Parliament.
Kibaki was sneaked in through a back gate away from public sight and media cameras. Why? Because he had difficulties walking and needed the help of a walking stick.
But, surely, what do you expect for a man of 89! Did his handlers expect him to come walking briskly as he did about 50 years ago when he read his first budget as Finance minister!
It reminded me of an old picture I saw in the Nation library: Kibaki met at the airport by his family on arrival from hospital in London way back in 1976.
He had suffered a minor stroke. But without official communication, rumours spread that he had gone for treatment after his boss hit him in the head with a bakora (walking stick).
The boss was angry, the story went, because Kibaki was the only Cabinet minister to attend the funeral of slain radical MP JM Kariuki, against government wishes, and where he rubbed it in by telling mourners that one day JM’s killers will be known even if it took one 100 years.
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For his part, President Moi wouldn’t let Kenyans know he had a small problem that comes with old age — an eye cataract — which required a minor operation to remove.
He quietly flew to Israel for the operation — though it could have been done at any hospital in Nairobi. I had mine removed (at age 41) at a hospital next to the Kangemi slums!
While he was away, the rumour mills went into overdrive. One version — the mild one — was that Mr President had flown out to “seek” treatment for “throat cancer”.
I remember a certain opposition MP telephoning to give me “clinical details” of what throat cancer is.
Never mind the MP was a dairy farmer — and likely had only been to a medical school once to seek orders to supply milk.
But in a country where H.E. and the VVIPs never get sick, would you fault the MP for his fertile fiction!
Postscript
This one just for a good laugh even as we fight Covid-19: During a live interview with Kiswahili radio stations last Wednesday, President Uhuru Kenyatta said — with a light touch — that since the “Korona curfew” has forced couples to be together for many long hours (actually 24/7), the government will be putting up more maternity hospitals as a contingency measure.
But a more hilarious one came from my friend with roots in the lakeside part of our country.
He told me that since his relatives are fond of naming newborns after personalities and events of the day, next year it is likely we will have children with names like Lockdown Otieno, Mask Odhiambo, Mercy-Mwangangi Achieng, and MacMutahi Odiek-Kagwe. Happy birthday to the expected new arrivals!
nkngotho@gmail.com
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