SPECIAL REPORT: Orie Rogo Manduli up close and personal

She is one of the most high profile people in Kenya, and not always for the best reasons. But if there’s one thing Ambassador (and she’s very particular about this title) Orie Rogo Manduli enjoys, it is being in the limelight. She has done a lot of that in the past few months, courtesy of a raging leadership wrangle at the National Council of Non-Governmental Organisations. Twice in just about the same number of months, she has been barricaded at the Kilimani offices of the council resisting all attempts to throw her out of office.

The latest episode in the drama of the life and times of Manduli is probably the most challenging yet, what with Culture and Heritage minister Najib Balala having stepped into the fray and the NGO Council gates locked to anyone entering — or leaving.

As we went to press, the fearless — “lioness in her cage” she thus described herself — Manduli had been in those offices for six days and was reported to be living on fruit and drinks handed to her over gate. Armed policemen stood guard, allowing journalists to speak with Manduli only through a small aperture on the metal gate as she remained in her vintage defiant mood.

It was just another blip in the life of a woman who has made her mark challenging virtually everything that conservative Kenyans hold dear. Everything about the woman currently in the news is larger than life, beginning with her trade mark towering head dresses to her high heels and on to her gravelly voice steadily proclaiming whatever cause she is taking up at any given moment.

Both her critics and admirers are agreed on one thing: there can never be anyone even remotely like Orie Rogo Manduli, however hard they tried. Indeed, even the Redykyulass comedy group, famed for sending up all kinds of people in public life, found it wise to have her make a personal appearance on their show — which she carried off amidst a lot of laughter.

As she dug in for a drawn-out battle for the NGO Council this week, there were many Kenyans arguing in her favour and against minister Balala, who stands accused of interfering in the affairs of an organisation beyond his scope of influence. It is just the kind of thing that gets Manduli going.

We bring you Orie Rogo Manduli in her own words, offered during a conversation through the small aperture at the gates of the NGO Council offices last weekend:
 

THE WAR WITH MINISTER BALALA

He can't win. He was a loser from day one because he plunged into murky waters. The whole saga is in my court. The minister is out order, out of his depth. The (caretaker) team led by Oduor Ong'wen will achieve zero and earn the contempt of Kenyans.

I am the first woman chair of the NGO Council. I suppose that, to them, a woman should not be in this important post, a pinnacle they thought was the preserve of men.

I want people to know that I did not become the chair out of the blue. I started in March 2003 as an ordinary member of the executive committee.

I had the highest vote count at the Silver Springs Hotel. Gichira Kibara came in as the chair and board members elected me vice-chair against Njeri Kinyoho of Action Aid-Kenya. Harun Ndubi of Kituo cha Sheria had the lowest. I was way up there, with more votes than even the chair.

I served as faithful vice-chair under Kibara until last year, when he got a better paying job as legal adviser to minister for Constitutional Affairs, Kiraitu Murungi. I automatically became the acting chair. We serve a three-year term and I should have acted all the way to the elections due in April next year.

But, oh no! Ndubi and his clique in the board said the chair was a very important position and an acting chair would not be able to make substantive decisions. We needed a substantive chair, they said, and we would have to go for elections. I said fine. They organised the election, orchestrated it and managed it and it is the same Ndubi who declared me the winner.

The next day, he was at State House with his fellow managers of the election – Mary Amuyunzu, Abdul Hamid and Njeri Kinyoho.

They didn't realise they were dealing with a woman who knows how to be elected. I know how to fight for what I want.
 

HER PUBLIC IMAGE

I am not into exhibitionism, but I am not camera-shy and I have nothing to hide. I thank God for the favours he has bestowed on me and my parents for their good genes. My advice to women seeking public positions is that they should be really thick-skinned and develop their own personae. They must know who they are and why they are. And where they are going.

I used to be the International Council of Women’s permanent representative to the United Nations Environment Programme and Habitat. Then came Kenyan insecurities and jealousies. Character assassination is one of the things Kenyans do well. They specialise in destroying people.
 

HER BACKGROUND

I was born in Maseno. Don't ask when. Ladies don't say, just like you don't tell us where you’ve been when you come home in the middle of the night. I was born to two teachers. My father was a headmaster, later to become Councillor Gordon Rogo, and his beautiful wife Zeruia Adhiambo, who later took vocational training and specialised in home economics and taught at Kisumu Technical College.

I attended Ng'iya Girls’ High School, just like my mother, then Butere Girls and then “Masaku California” (Machakos Girls). Again, no dates please.

After, I went to Machakos Teachers College but I never taught. I went there because my parents thought it would give me the discipline I needed in life. I married immediately and left for Canada, where I did a diploma in office management.

My first job was with Kenya Railways and Harbours Corporation as the personal assistant to P.J. Mwangola, who was the general manager.

In 1973, he looked at me and said “Orie, you are very ambitious, where are you headed?” The stars, I said.

In 1974, I landed a job at the Coffee Board of Kenya as an administrative manager. I was the first woman to hold such a post in Kenya. In 1975, I got a bigger job as marketing and public relations manager with Metal Box in charge of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Again, I was the first woman to hold such a job. At the end of that year, I bought a large farm. I was fascinated with land.

At Metal Box, we did irrigation pipes, which I marketed vigorously. I bought the farm at an auction by CB Mistri Auctioneers. When I bought it, I realised I had loaded myself with three loans, one for the land, the other for farm implements and then for cattle.

As I was busy negotiating for the farm, the Safari Rally also got into my head. I used to work at KBC in the evenings. I had two shows going on Mambo Leo and Women's World — a weekly. Because of my broadcasting, I would interview rally drivers. There were these foreign women drivers coming in and then I said to myself, why don't we have Kenyan woman also running? I felt so bad. There was a sprinkling of quite a few Kenyan men participating but not a single woman.

I was told that no Kenyan woman would think of it, let alone try, so forget about it Orie. And I said here I am, I would like to do it. And I did it in 1974 with the Sylvia Omino, Joab’s wife. The safari was hectic, it was beautiful, the most exciting thing I've ever done in my life. I was the driver, I am always the driver. It's just that I’m always the driver in any situation. We did not finish but managed two legs.
 

MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE

I started out as Mary Orie Rogo. Mary Orie Rogo Ondieki was a mouthful. I decided to drop Mary and my parents were very annoyed because I was named after Mary Slessor, the Scottish missionary who was working in Calabar, Nigeria, in those days rescuing twins who were considered a taboo and were being killed. I am Mary Slessor. My father called me Slessor and I actually sign as Slessor.

Ondieki was my first husband and I had my three beautiful daughters — Elizabeth, Allison and Janice — with him. He was a civil servant. But, please, shall we discuss Orie?

The marriage didn't work. Five years later, we divorced and I took care of the children. When you're incompatible, I tell you it's tough. It doesn't work. It doesn't matter what you cook, the man won't taste it. It doesn't matter what you wear, he won't even see it.

I had these three girls and he thought it was a tragedy that there was no son in between. He said, “Well at this rate with one girl, two girls, three girls and you are a Caesarean case, I may never get a son. So could you kindly step aside so that I can get boys?”

I went for custody, care and control of my children. There was no child maintenance. The late Justice Cecil Miller ordered it, but I never saw any. And I didn't hanker after it. I had seen the marriage of my mother's sister fall apart and the acrimony over child maintenance. I didn't want to be involved in anything like that. I thought it was very undignified and time wasting.

I decided my children and I would live within my income, however small. Then again, I come from a very disciplined family. My father and mother were very disciplined financially.

That's how I ended up doing extra work after office hours with the KBC — Voice of Kenya then. The money wasn't much but the joy was in being busy throughout. I was very resourceful at finding my own guests. I got the cream, including Bishop Makarios of Cyprus, the Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie, Nigerian leader Yakubu Gowon and his wife Victoria and James Bond — no, Sean Connery.

At the end of 1975, I resigned (from Metal Box) to go and look after my farm. I remember three big tears falling as I did my resignation letter because I loved my job.

Before I left, I would drive to Kitale and arrive in the dead of night and get a few things done. Very early in the morning, I would drive back to Nairobi and be in the office.

I used to be able to do Nairobi-Kitale in three-and-half hours flat using my rally skills. I am extremely daring. I never say never. Nothing is too much for me — including being locked behind these gates now, where you are interviewing me.

My father was thrilled to bits when I did the Safari. He could have died of happiness. When I bought the farm, he was even happier. He said, “This is it”, and resigned to help me run it. Mum remained teaching in Kisumu. When I went to the farm, it was completely run down and dilapidated and it was so difficult living in a tent the first six months while renovating the place. We had two — one for dad and one for myself.

Kats (Katesha), my last born [ the son from the second marriage], has just turned 22 and graduated on August 12 cum laude. He is leaving for Japan to do his masters in robotics. He was at Brigham Young University in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The oldest is engineer Elizabeth Rogo. She is in Houston, Texas — the only woman in the world who knows what to do with the oil underground. She mines oil. I went to school later with my daughters. You know I married young without a degree. I had gone to Canada before they were born. Later, I went to university with them where their father was. Allison Achieng runs her own human resource organisation called ORES — an overseas recruitment agency in Westlands. Janice is a logistician and also the one who manages the family property.
 

ENTER MANDULI

I remarried in 1980, to Norman Manduli — a Zambian from Luapula and cousin of Chiluba [former Zambian president]. Manduli was a politician and a businessman in Lusaka but worked right across Africa. I met him when I went to interview Joshua Nkomo [Zimbabwean freedom fighter]. BBC asked me to interview him just before Zimbabwe’s independence. Nkomo was living in Lusaka and Mugabe was in Maputo in Mozambique. The British were sure Nkomo would win the election, so they were concentrating on him. Nkomo had a bigger budget than the Zambian government and a bigger armoury.

I was staying at the Intercontinental Lusaka. Manduli's house was right across. That's how I met him. Actually, I didn't. It was his daughters who met my children as they played by the pool with a nanny. Manduli's daughters got interested in the three pretty girls so they told him about meeting them at the pool and that their mum was there interviewing Nkomo before he returned to Zimbabwe for the election.

He passed away two years ago. We didn't part ways. We had been together throughout. He was a wonderful husband and father.
 

HER REAL ESTATE

I have a house in Karen, bought in 1986. The one I bought earlier in 1980 (Ardwyn House) is in Riverside Drive. Manduli and I married in late 1980 but I had bought the house in early 1980. The one in Riara Close — at Thompson Estate — I bought in 1986. I love auctions. All my houses and farm are auction-bought.

At Metal Box, we did security printing — cheques and stamps — so I dealt with banks a lot. They would order the cheques through the marketing department. So when I needed to go to the auctions, I simply told my bank I may need some money. I took one loan [the farm one] from the National Bank of Kenya and transferred it to the Agricultural Finance Corporation.

I've always bought alone. My father was very wise and had always told me, “Orie, what you can't buy alone, don't touch. Anything to do with we and us is pregnant with disputes at some point.”

The Riverside one I bought from a diplomat. Musila. Was there a diplomat called Musila? It was through Tysons, so we never got to meet. The first house I bought in 1973 when I came from Canada with a loan from Savings and Loans. They helped me through purchases.

They helped me buy the Kileleshwa house on Suguta Road, which I later sold. When I repaid the loan, they gave me the second one to buy the Lavington house. My financial dealings are strictly managed. I am strict with myself and very frugal. I bite according to what I can chew.

I try to repay earlier. If they gave me, say 10 years, I would pay in seven, five. I don't owe any bank any money. I tightened my belt, I would go without food, go without luxuries, eat once a day.

I was determined that my children should have the best education. The girls went to Kaptagat Prep School and later Green Acres in Limuru and then England. Allison was in Kenya High for just a term and then I transferred her to Lusaka International in Zambia.

From there, she went to the Isle of Wight in England, to join her sister Elizabeth who was doing her A-Levels there. The three girls went to Mount St Vincent University, Halifax, in Canada, where I joined them (as a student).

I did a degree in public relations and got it cum laude in 1991. Then I went on to a Masters in International Relations.

My son went to Kenton one to five then six to seven Banda School then Harrow School in Middlesex, UK — the famous Harrow. I had only one son and was determined he must go to Harrow. Winston Churchill went there, you know.

After O-Levels, the boy left for Brigham. He graduated on August 12. Because of this embroilment here, Elizabeth and my niece from France, Melanie, flew out for the graduation ceremony.

I came back home just in time for the madness of multi-party politics. Jaramogi was my mentor. He taught me tenacity — taking a stand and abiding by it. I contested in Starehe in 1992 and all my votes were stolen. I was so green I just thought that people went to church and then went to vote and votes were counted. That year, the euphoria was Matiba. Anything Matiba was passing in Nairobi, even a chicken.

When I didn't make it, I returned to Canada in 1993 and finished my masters. The boy was in Kenton College. He was very little and it was tough leaving him.
 

HER ELEGANCE

That’s the Obota in me. That's my mother. My mother inherited it from her father, Obota. He designed and made women's attire. My mother inherited her father's artistry with his big scissors and the sewing machine he bought when he started the business. My mother was a beauty.

I take after her. I make my own clothes. It’s not in the wearing, but the way you carry yourself. Give them to another woman and they will not be the same.