A road in Nakuru town will be named after Lena Moi, the departed ex-wife to former President Daniel Moi.
This was announced by Nakuru governor Lee Kinyanjui during the Mashuja day celebrations on Saturday.
The governor said this was in recognition to her service to the people and to the county.
Kinyanjui said Maragoli Road in Milimani estate will be renamed Lena Moi road in recognition to the contribution made by the former First Lady.
“This administration has decided to have a place to honour the departed and living heroes and heroines. Nakuru has a special place in the history of the country and it is never short of people who have made the county proud over the years- before and after independence,” the governor said.
Mrs. Moi passed away in July 2004.
In the 1960s and early 1970s, Lena Tungo Moi strode Kenya’s political scene with her visibility as the vice-president’s wife.
Then in the middle of the 1970s, she faded away from the public arena never to be heard of again until her death in 2004.
The collapse of her marriage in 1974 and divorce in 1979 was a bitter blow to the ardent Christian who had been raised under strict African Inland Church (AIC) doctrines.
Lena, born in 1926, was also a student at the AIM School in Eldama Ravine before she joined Tenwek Girls’ Boarding School in Kericho.
A devout Christian, she, together with her brother William Bomett and sister Dina, became the face of educated converts.
After exposure in the US with some Christian families, Lena had returned to become a primary school teacher and would visit local churches accompanied by Moi. They would each carry a Bible.
“She was an iron lady but with a great sense of humour,” recalled Paul Chemirchir in Moi’s biography, The Making of An African Statesman, by Andrew Morton.
It was during this period that Lena started dating Moi, whose promotion to principal at Tambach (he was recommended by education officer Moses Mudavadi, the father of one of Moi’s vice-presidents, Musalia Mudavadi) shoved him into stardom in the region, first as a teacher, then as a preacher.