Girl with pretty face for whom Jomo’s secrets were open book

The phone rang in the office of a manager at Barclays Bank, Queensway Branch. It was a few weeks after one of the bank’s clerks had been crowned Miss Uhuru 1963.

Elizabeth Mumbi was at her desk and Prime Minister Jomo Kenyatta was waiting to speak to her from the other end of the telephone line. He was calling from his Harambee House office.

Reluctantly, the manager handed the phone to her. When she heard the voice at the other end, Mumbi was stunned. It was Kenyatta asking her to go to Harambee House for an interview.

She was met by Duncan Ndegwa, then a permanent secretary in the PM’s office.

“He asked me if I knew anything about politics,” Mumbi recalls in her new autobiography, Miss Uhuru 1963: Working for Mzee Jomo Kenyatta. “Not really,” she replied with the naivety of a 23-year-old girl.

Unlike the new set of African elite who had found themselves in Kenyatta’s inner circle — thanks to their education — Mumbi was coming in courtesy of her pretty face.

She was a girl-about-town. In the evenings, like other elite girls, when time allowed, she would be one of the regulars at the Africa Club, a small smoky club near Jeevanjee Gardens, where the African elite would meet for drinks and a dance — prior to and several years after Independence.

“My friends and I were not members but, as far as I can recall, we used to just walk in and find everyone there ... It was a new life altogether for a girl like me,” she writes in the book released on Monday by the Kenya Literature Bureau.

ABRUPTLY CUT SHORT

Mumbi’s happy-go-lucky lifestyle was abruptly cut short by Kenyatta’s call. Without much preamble, she was thrust into the world of political aficionados and State House protocol and, of course, the intrigues that came with proximity to power.

The book sheds light into the social life of the then First Family, with whom Mumbi worked until Kenyatta’s death in August 1978 before she was retained by the Daniel arap Moi State House for another eight years.

Hired as social secretary, to replace Miss Margaret Smith, Mumbi’s duties revolved around the welfare of Mzee Kenyatta and his family. There was the official nanny, Wambui Njage. While both Mama Ngina and Mzee Kenyatta would leave for Gatundu every evening, the young children would be left behind in their Caledonia Road home with Mumbi and Wambui looking after them. Thus, her duties were to give assistance to the family and run official errands when called upon to.

“I would pick up the young children and take them to school…. I also attended parents days and speech days at their schools because Mama Ngina and Mzee were pre-occupied with State duties,” she writes.

MISSED THEIR PARENTS

From her observation, Mumbi noted that “it was obvious (the younger children) missed their parents” and, as a result, she arranged for them to be seeing their parents most afternoons before Mzee and Mama Ngina left for Gatundu.

Mumbi describes the young Uhuru Kenyatta as a curious child.

“One time he asked why police officers guarded his father … why his father married a European wife and yet he fought against colonialism,” she writes. “Whenever we travelled by car, Uhuru would sit in the front seat, and as he got older, he wanted to drive.”

Inside State House, Jomo Kenyatta would not entertain gossip from the staff. He would usually embarrass gossips with: “Come and tell me what you were saying about so and so,” recalls Mumbi.

“The embarrassment of such a confrontation would put an end to the rumours.”

During Kenyatta’s State House years, they maintained cutlery with the Queen’s crest or that of King George. These were replaced with plates with Kenya’s crest after President Moi came to power.

“People wondered why we kept to the old colonial stuff. Mzee would joke and ask: “Are you interested in the food or in cutlery?”
Kenyatta enjoyed steak cooked medium, fish, Irish potatoes, vegetables and Yorkshire pudding with gravy. He never ate pork and didn’t like sukuma wiki (kale), she says.

“Once in a while, Mzee would have traditional soup made from goat meat. This was never served at the table. He would take this at any time of the day whenever he felt like.”
Then there were protocol goofs. One day, Cabinet minister Jackson Angaine arrived at a Queen’s Dinner with three of his wives and the reservation had only been for a couple.

“I believe the minister had difficulties in choosing which one of his wives to bring along,” says Mumbi.
Asked to confirm which one he would bring along, Angaine said: “Nitafanya nini kama wote wanataka kuja? (I had no choice since all wanted to accompany me).” And he appeared with all three.

“When Malawi’s Kamuzu Banda toured Kenya on a State visit, protocol was tricky for State House staff. He had no wife; he had an official hostess, Cecilia Kadzamila. None of us knew where to place her until we talked to Mbiyu Koinange (Kenyatta’s minister of State)… Koinange told us that the official hostess was very senior … I treated her like a First Lady,” recalls Mumbi.

The 1966 changes within Kanu and the resignation of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga as Vice-President complicated matters at State House.
“We were careful about whom to invite … and we had to know who was on whose side. We wondered how Mzee Kenyatta would take it,” says Mumbi.

NOT INTERESTED IN GIRLS

About Charles Njonjo, Kenyatta’s Attorney-General, Mumbi recalls that he spent many hours with the President. But there was something else: “Njonjo paid little or no attention to the girls at State House or anywhere else and we sometimes wondered if he would ever get married.”

Then there was a Cabinet minister, Dawson Mwanyumba, who, as age and senility took a toll on him, would go to State House “with a wooden comb stuffed in his jacket”.

Kenyatta never went to State House on Mondays and weekends.

“One evening, he came from Jamhuri Park rather late in the day. He wanted to sleep in State House, but before too long, the frogs in the fish pond started croaking. He got annoyed and left for Gatundu. He told everyone that the frogs were the ghosts of the white people,” says Mumbi.

Kenyatta never cut his hair, according to Mumbi, never went bald and would tell everyone: “I am made of special material.”

But he usually suffered from eczema on one side of his leg and, when in Mombasa, “he would ask me to apply mud from the ocean on his skin. I would also mix it with sea water — to cool the skin.”

Though Mumbi tells us that Kenyatta never had health problems “apart from gout”, it is known that he suffered from a heart disease.

While Mama Ngina was the First Lady, Kenyatta’s first wife, Grace Wahu, continued to live in Dagoretti, where she had a big house. When Kenyatta visited Wahu, he would have minimum escort and would carry some shopping for her.

“Grace Wahu was a very simple, practical and private person,” says Mumbi.

Kenyatta’s English wife Edna also made two visits to see the President. Mumbi recalls: “Ngina was actually quite fond of Edna … on one occasion, Edna watched traditional dances with Mzee … it was obvious he loved her very much.”

Every Monday, Mumbi would go to Gatundu and open all Kenyatta’s letters and type out summaries. These included Kenyatta’s bank accounts and, from Mumbi’s observations, “Mzee did not have large amounts of money … I do not believe he had other accounts.

“There were some letters that came to Mzee that were so special and personal that I did not know how to deal with them. I could not discuss them with Mzee, Mama Ngina or anybody else … I decided the only person close enough for these sensitive matters was Koinange,” says Mumbi, without elaborating what was contained in the letters.

She only says they related to Mzee and Koinange’s days in Europe.

The book also shares Kenyatta’s love for roses, gardening and the humour that came with the job. One day, Koinange entered the car but got out, realising he had forgotten something in the house. Unaware that Koinange had rushed back to the house, the driver drove all the way to Harambee House, leaving his boss behind.

“The driver thought he must have fallen out of the moving car,” says Mumbi, who got married to Major Marsden Madoka, who served as Kenyatta’s aide-de-camp before joining politics.