Kenyans are making a lot of noise about the government to award former Vice President Moody Awori a new job on his 91st birthday.
But if his daily routine is anything to go by, then uncle Moody deserves his new job. The old man maybe 91 but he is as fit as a Kenyan rugby sevens player.
Every morning at 4:30 am, without fail, Moody Awori, springs out of bed. After doing “only 30” press ups, he takes to his floor exercises, which involve some serious stretching that Moody is very happy to explain in detail.
“I lie on my back and then I flip over until my feet touch the ground. Then I get up and do that again… 150 times,” he says casually.
It is a punishing and gruelling 30-minute exercise that could break your back, but he says he has been doing that for over 40 years now. It is a type of floor exercise he learnt from a Sikh woman when he had a serious back problem, which is now long gone.
Many people stop at the floor exercises. Mr Awori doesn’t. He puts on his track suit and walking shoes and finds one of his bodyguards waiting for him at the lobby. Together they take a five-kilometre walk from his home in Nairobi’s Muthangari to Safaricom House along Waiyaki way. That walk takes him about an hour.
It is now almost 6 am. Mr Awori changes into his swimming gear and does 20 laps around his bean-shaped, azure blue swimming pool before returning upstairs for a hearty breakfast. He walks five days a week, Mondays to Fridays, but swims “365 days a year”, he says. “I walk without fail. Even when it is raining heavily I have no excuse because I have a raincoat and waterproof walking shoes,” he adds.
He steps into his office at exactly 9 am to sign cheques and now also his newly launched autobiography, but mostly to work on his computer. Sometimes, you will find him in his office at the Prof Nelson Awori Centre – a building he owns – and sometimes, like on Friday morning, you will find him in his home office, overlooking the vast parking lot at his splendid Lavington Muthangari home.