Blazing the trail: How a timid young girl claimed her place in history

When you are getting on in years (but not ill, of course), you get very sleepy at times, and the hours seem to pass like lazy cattle moving across a landscape? 

From Goodbye, Mr Chips, by James Hilton. 

It’s a Wednesday afternoon and photographer Kamau and I are in the compound of Alliance High School, Kikuyu. With us in the car is Zibiah Wangari Ngatho, a slightly stooped lady aged over 86 years, who recalls that she last visited the school about 15 years ago when her nephew, now a professor at the University of Nairobi, was getting married in the school chapel.

Before arriving at Alliance, we have spent some time visiting Musa Gitau Primary School, which many decades ago used to be run by the Church of Scotland Mission. In those years it was probably the leading primary education institution in Kenya, and was to become the alma mater of such luminaries as Jomo Kenyatta, James Gichuru and other denizens of Kenya’s intellectual and political life. Musa Gitau was also the school Zibiah attended, for both nursery and primary school studies, and our photo session there attracts the curiosity of youthful workers marvelling at this granny who expresses herself in impeccable English as she recalls her childhood days there. 

Puzzled students

At Alliance, the school principal, Mr Khaemba, is away on official business, so our first stop is the office of his deputy, Mr Solomon Maina Mwangi, whom we inform about the old lady in the car. She happens to have been among the first three girls to join the famous school nearly 70 years ago and is the only surviving one. An excited Mwangi enthusiastically agrees to join us as the old lady points out buildings in the school that she still remembers from her school days at Alliance, between January 1938 and the end of 1941. Lunchtime is approaching as we begin our quick tour of the school, and Form 4 students attending holiday classes are streaming out of the classrooms. Presently, a beaming Mr Mwangi summons three of them, all senior prefects. 

“This is one of our old boys,” he tells them as he gestures towards the old lady, who is also beaming as she reminisces about her school days at the institution nearly seven decades earlier. Studying the puzzled expressions on the prefects’ faces, the jovial deputy principal tells the students that the old lady was in the 1938-1941 class, noting that their own grandparents were probably not yet born by then. As the puzzled students saunter off towards the dining hall, we head towards the chapel where Zibiah and her schoolmates used to worship many decades earlier. The chapel has since been converted into the George Grieve Memorial Library for junior students, and is named in memory of the first headmaster of the school. Apart from the chapel, still standing solid, many buildings that were still there when Alliance High School first opened in 1926 are today in decent shape, relics of ages gone by, and help jog Zibiah’s memory as she takes us down memory lane. 

Educating girls

Her four years at Alliance began in January 1938, when together with Lois Njeri and Rahab Wanduma they formed the first trio of girls to be admitted at the school. Already in their late teens by the time they began secondary education, the three girls had one important thing in common: they were the daughters of some of the earliest Kenyan African converts to Christianity, Njeri being the daughter of Canon John Paul Mbatia, a pioneer minister of the Anglican Church in Murang’a, while Zibiah was the eldest child of Reverend Ishmael Wango, an early priest in the Church of Scotland Mission, which in later years metamorphosed into today’s Presbyterian Church of East Africa. Rahab, on the other hand, was the daughter of a gentleman named Musa Ngururia, who though not a priest had in those early years recognised the importance of educating girls. 

Zibiah’s own parents, the late Reverend Ishmael Ngatho, who was born in 1889 and saw service in the Carrier Corps during the First World War, and his wife Alexandra Njeri, who was a few years younger, were both orphans. They had been among the pioneer students at Mambere, where they had met many years earlier, before getting married in March 1918. At Mambere, they had been schoolmates of Jomo Kenyatta – then known as Johnstone Kamau Ngengi – and would remain his life-long friends. 

Kenyatta later took two of their sons, George Githii and Zakayo Mwangi, under his wings, appointing them, respectively, his personal assistant and chairman of the Teachers’ Service Commission. Githii, the last born in the family, would later become a legendary and controversial journalist in Kenya, becoming editor of both the Nation and East African Standard newspapers. The Wangos’ third son, Willie Njoroge, was to become one of the most senior African officers in the colonial police force, and rose to the rank of Inspector before being dismissed after a clash with a magistrate named McReady, who had accused him – apparently justifiably – of being a Mau Mau collaborator during Kenya’s infamous State of Emergency. A younger brother, Manasseh, would later also join the medical profession, together with Githii’s immediate elder sister, Deborah Mukami, while yet another sister became a teacher. 

However much the allure of quality education was for the three girls to join Alliance High School, for two of them the allure of marriage was apparently even greater, and at the age of 17 Rahab Wanduma – who died in 1991 - had already dropped out of Alliance to get married to one Mr Warobi. Lois Njeri, who died in 1966, was to follow suit not much later, when in 1939, after completing her Junior Certificate studies (equivalent of today’s Form 2), she failed to go back to Alliance, and in 1940 got married to a suave young man who had just returned to Kenya after studies in the United States. That man’s name was Mbiyu Koinange, who was to become President Kenyatta’s right hand man and brother-in-law when his father, the famous Chief Koinange wa Mbiyu, was to offer the future president his daughter’s hand in marriage soon after Kenyatta returned from England in the late 1940s. 

Apparently, well-educated girls were in short supply at the time, and elitist young African men seeking suitable spouses were always on the prowl, gunning for the few girls who made it to Alliance or to other pioneer missionary schools. For instance, Lois’ sister Martha and Muthoni Gachanja, today known as Muthoni Likimani, a renowned broadcaster and author who was also a clergyman’s daughter and a pioneer student at Kahuhia Girls’ School, ended up getting married, respectively, to leading cleric Reverend John Mpaayei and pioneer medic, Dr Jason Likimani, who were in their time household names in Kenya. But although Zibiah was able to resist the temptation of early marriage, with the dropping out of her two pioneer comrades, she was fearful that come 1940 she would be the sole girl student at Alliance. Her imminent solitude was however to be allayed when four other girls joined the school in 1940.

Although they were her juniors, she would find herself sharing a room with them in a staff house occupied by their European matron and warden, one Miss Rosie. With the four new girls – Grace Wairimu, Sophia Nyokabi, Jane Wairimu and Rahab Nyanjau, Zibiah would have her meals in the main dining hall, together with male schoolmates, and recalls how the girls’ interactions with the boys would be full of teasing and pranks pulled by the boys. “Our school mates were generally very good and kind boys, but they would relentlessly tease the girls, she said during the interview. “You know how young boys are!” She was particularly targeted, being the only girl in a class that had 39 boys. 

Among the male classmates that she still remembers, were the late William Ouko, who later became a doctor and Stanley Kagika, who had a long career as a laboratory technician at the then King George Hospital, which later became Kenyatta National Hospital. Other classmates were Gamariel Obath and Matthew Mwenesi, who both became teachers, and Yonah Otsyula, who later trained at the famous Mulago Hospital in Kampala, Uganda, and for many years also worked as a doctor at the King George Hospital, and only died a few years ago. As fate would have it, Matthew Mwenesi’s daughters – who include Dr Bilha Mwenesi, a lecturer in French studies at the University of Nairobi — would many years later become classmates of Zibiah’s sole child, daughter Stella Ngatho, at the Kenya High School in Nairobi, while his sons – among them renowned actor and lawyer Stephen Musalia Mwenesi – ended up as schoolmates of many of her nephews who attended the Duke of York School in Nairobi, which later became Lenana School. 

Stating that the above five male classmates were academic geniuses, Zibiah recalls that the late William Ouko stood head over shoulders above his classmates. “He was an amazing boy!” she recalls. “He suffered from recurrent bouts of tuberculosis, and sometimes would be away from school for as long as six months, but when he returned he would still top the class, and nobody could ever displace him from the number one position!” 

Essential books

When they finally sat the Cambridge School Certificate in 1941, after four years at Alliance, only four boys out of the class of 40 passed the examination. “We were only the second lot to sit for the examination, and we had expected to perform well, despite the fact that the examination was particularly hard,” Zibiah recalls. “However, the Second World War, which had broken out in 1939, was raging during our final three years at the school, and adversely affected us since it denied us access to essential books that we needed to prepare for the exam.” 

Zibiah also explained that all along they had been taught by dedicated teachers, who included the late James Gichuru and J.D. Otiende – still alive and based near Chavakali in Western Province — who taught them literature and music respectively, and who were to later become prominent as among the members of Kenyatta’s first cabinet. That first cabinet was vastly dominated by Alliance High School alumni. 

Other Africans who taught the class were David Ng’atia, a gentleman from Machakos who taught Kiswahili, and one Mr Ojal. The latter, Zibiah recalls, “had a beautiful voice and sang extremely well.” Among the European teachers was the legendary Carey Francis, who taught mathematics to all the students in the school. 

The poor performance in that examination was to deny Zibiah and the majority of her classmates from attaining their long-cherished dreams to study for degrees at Makerere University in Uganda, the then centre of higher education in east and central Africa. But that temporary setback did not deter Zibiah from pursuing her particular dream of one day studying at that renowned institution, which in later years would produce presidents such as Mwai Kibaki, Julius Nyerere and William Mkapa, as well as such academic luminaries and writers as David Rubadiri, John Ruganda, Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Ali Mazrui. 

Zibiah’s immediate move after leaving Alliance was, however, to enrol for a course in nursing and midwifery at the Mengo Hospital in Kampala, where she studied for five years, until 1946. On the train journey to Uganda, she was accompanied by two young men, Samson Mwathi and James Gichuru’s younger brother, Mbuthia, who were going to study medicine at Mulago Hospital, and who years later would be among Kenya’s pioneer medics. Having begun her own training at Mengo at the age of 22, Zibiah was 26 years old by the time she left the hospital, and remembers the disappointment that she and her colleagues felt at not being awarded professional nursing certificates, despite the fact that they had completed their course successfully. 

Encountered frustrations

“There was a lot of colour-bar then, and the colonial authorities would not even contemplate awarding us certificates that would make us nursing sisters, then a preserve of white women,” she says, adding that the training at Mengo was particularly difficult, partly because the students were affected by the still raging Second World War and a major famine in 1943. 

Having graduated from Mengo, Zibiah returned home and began her working life at the Hunter Memorial Hospital in Kikuyu, where her younger sister Annah Nyambura was, in her footsteps, also studying nursing. However, she encountered frustrations there, and left after a few months to go back to Mengo, where she had been offered a teaching position, which she held for several years, before finally attaining her dream of studying at Makerere, where she was between 1947 and 1948, undertaking a teaching course. 

Together with her at the famous university was her brother Zakayo Mwangi, two years younger than her and also an alumnus of Alliance, who had preceded her there, and with whom they had been exchanging visits when she was still at Mengo. Mwangi, who died some years ago, was to become a teacher at Alliance after leaving Makerere, and later study at the famous Cambridge University in England before establishing himself as a leading academic writer and educationist in Kenya. 

As for Zibiah, after leaving Makerere she decided to go back to nursing, but this time around she was not in a hurry to return to Kenya, and instead returned to Mengo, where she worked as a nurse for more that a decade, before eventually joining Uganda’s department of community development, where she was to work as a community development officer in different towns in Uganda until her retirement in 1973, when she returned to Kenya, and for some years worked as a matron at the Limuru Girls’ School. 

Training courses

Having spent practically all her working life in Uganda, Zibiah made many friends among the high and mighty in that country, among them Miria Obote, the former President’s wife, and one Damary Kisosonkole, a lady who was to become the wife of Kabaka Mutesa of Buganda. She was also, on account of her community development job, over the years sponsored for different training courses in Israel, Denmark and India. 

During Zibiah’s stay in Uganda, which had become her second home, she mastered the Luganda language and culture, and even took to wearing the busuti, the country’s national dress. It was also in that country that her daughter Stella – today a special education professional in Atlanta, Georgia — was born in 1951, when her mother was already in her thirties, having defied the biological clock for years, even as her former schoolmates settled down and had their own families. In addition to her daughter, Zibiah’s family included a Ugandan boy named Musigwa, whom she had adopted at the age of only one week after the death of the biological mother during his birth. 

Explaining why she herself never got married, Zibiah simply says: “ For me education and professional life were my priorities, and I simply did not even think about marriage.” She added that she has been a practising Seventh Day Adventist for the past 20 years. “ Today I’m just alone with Jehovah.” A little weary after the lengthy interview Zibiah, like Mr Chips, went into a snooze once in a while, but all in all she came across as a contented old lady, happy about the way she had lived her life.