As the country celebrate 40 years since the passing of the first president of the republic of Kenya, Here are some of the facts you need to know about Mzee Jomo Kenyatta:
Missionary teachers at Thogoto Church of Scotland Mission Station thought Kamau wa Ngengi who was born in Ng’enda, Gatundu, in the early 1890s, was only good enough to be a mason on an account of his poor grades.
He defied them and pursued a career in politics In 1914 missionaries wanted him to baptised John Peter Kamau but he defied them and added “stone” to the John hence Johnstone Kamau, Kenyatta’s early name Kenyatta escaped to Narok to avoid conscription into the Kings African Rifles (colonial army) to fight in World War 1 working as a clerk in a ranch.
He would be nicknamed Kinyatta, after kinyatta — the beaded Maasai belt you see him in his early photographs. And the name stuck. Kinyatta would later become Kenyatta.
By 1921, Kenyatta was a stylish water meter reader swooshing about Nairobi in a motorbike.
He would get himself a wife, Grace Wahu, then a student at the Church Missionary Society girls’ school in Kabete whom he wished to wed in “privacy” to avoid paying dowry.
Not amused, the church accused him of “committing sin with a girl whom he is buying as a wife, and as a result of which she is with child,” writes Kenyatta’s biographer Murray-Brown, quoting church documents
The church was also concerned with Kenyatta’s drinking. But what did it expect of a man who ran Kinyatta Stores at Dangoretti where he sold the stuff? For that he was suspended from receiving the Holy Communion, ex-communicated and strongly advised to live with Wahu only after getting legally married. Brown writes Kenyatta agreed to a customary wedding but refused to stop drinking. The missionaries even refused to recommend him for a job.
Later as a wage collection clerk, Kenyatta earned Sh250 taking home more than European clerks, he would built a hut for Wahu and their first born son, Peter Muigai, a former MP for Juja who died in 1979.
Brown writes, “The hut doubled as a shop, which he called Kinyatta Stores, a “rickety place of fun never before seen in Kikuyuland”. It was the port of call for Goans and broke Europeans who patronised it for shots of Nubian gin, music and women.
Until 1926, Kenyatta showed no political inclinations until Joseph Kang’ethe, the then secretary-general of the Kikuyu Central Association (KCA) urged him join KCA because of his command of English.
He obliged. John Cook, the Thika colonial water engineer would now fire the radicalised wage collection clerk water meter reader after Kenyatta became the editor of Muiguithania, (The Reconciler), the association’s mouthpiece.
When Harry Thuku, the chairman of Kikuyu Central Association which was agitating for political rights, was arrested and detained in Kismayu, Kenyatta found him in Mombasa boarding the Bernadio de St Pierre, a French liner to London where he took up residence at 57 Castletown Road in 1929. The aim was to present Kikuyu land grievances to the British secretary of state.