Post by roughrider on Aug 21, 2006 15:21:04 GMT 3
Two events in the recent past have persuaded me to make this appeal.
First Mzee Moi, the retired president has had two surgical operations on his right knee after surviving a road accident near Lari in Kiambu. While we all wish Moi a quick recovery, this accident – and the sight of a humbled Moi lying in bed at the Nairobi hospital - has reminded us of the frailties of human life.
Secondly, Rangwe MP Philip Okundi married Doris Ombara at the Nairobi Jockey club last Sunday. Mr Okundi lost his wife Phelgona in a ghastly road accident near Kericho about one year ago. Former President Moi on the other hand had lost his former wife Lena to illness about a year earlier.
Moi married Helena (endeared as Lena) Bommet in 1950 and they were blessed with 8 children; 3 daughters and five sons, (Jennifer, Doris and adopted daughter June; Jonathan, Raymond, John Mark, Philip and Gideon). The couple separated and divorced almost 25 years later (1974) and Moi moved with the children from their Kambi-Moi family home to Kabarak Farm.
While, according to Andrew Morton in Moi: The Making of an African Statesman, Moi’s Lena chose the humble life of an African house wife, Okundi’s Phelgona was a vivacious extrovert to whom politics was second nature. The people of Rangwe (which we love to call Asego) credit Okundi’s political ascendancy in no small part to his wife’s political skill. In fact she rose at one point to become the provincial boss (Nyanza) of the Maendeleo ya Wanawake organization.
But Moi did not remarry after divorce, perhaps out of respect and ‘fidelity’ to Lena and the family. Lena on her part was said to have maintained a room in her house ‘as a shrine to her former husband’ whom she believed would eventually come back to her when the politics was done. We cannot say if Moi was staid and celibate – actually rumors of dalliances with school headmistresses persisted during his reign as president and at one point one Marianne Brinner Marten surfaced to make sensational claims about being Moi’s secret lover. But all these were just that; rumours and unsubstantiated claims. In general, however, Moi biographer Andrew Morton talks of a lonely Moi.
Now, Philip Okundi did not waste much time after Phelgona’s demise. He has remarried. And lucky Philip too, he has found himself a mature, stable woman. They are of course not in short supply! Moi on the other hand continues to wallow in matrimonial loneliness. All the medical expertise of Dr. David Silverstein, the organizational prowess of John Lokorio or the sympathetic outpourings of 35 million Kenyans cannot replace the feminine comforts of a caring wife.
I fully agreed with Desmond Tutu when he urged Nelson Mandela to marry saying Mandela ‘needed a shoulder to cry on’; and so does Moi. Philip Okundi has set a very good example that other widowers might want to follow.
Mzee Moi should remarry, and soon.
By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher. Socrates (469 BC – 399 BC)
First Mzee Moi, the retired president has had two surgical operations on his right knee after surviving a road accident near Lari in Kiambu. While we all wish Moi a quick recovery, this accident – and the sight of a humbled Moi lying in bed at the Nairobi hospital - has reminded us of the frailties of human life.
Secondly, Rangwe MP Philip Okundi married Doris Ombara at the Nairobi Jockey club last Sunday. Mr Okundi lost his wife Phelgona in a ghastly road accident near Kericho about one year ago. Former President Moi on the other hand had lost his former wife Lena to illness about a year earlier.
Moi married Helena (endeared as Lena) Bommet in 1950 and they were blessed with 8 children; 3 daughters and five sons, (Jennifer, Doris and adopted daughter June; Jonathan, Raymond, John Mark, Philip and Gideon). The couple separated and divorced almost 25 years later (1974) and Moi moved with the children from their Kambi-Moi family home to Kabarak Farm.
While, according to Andrew Morton in Moi: The Making of an African Statesman, Moi’s Lena chose the humble life of an African house wife, Okundi’s Phelgona was a vivacious extrovert to whom politics was second nature. The people of Rangwe (which we love to call Asego) credit Okundi’s political ascendancy in no small part to his wife’s political skill. In fact she rose at one point to become the provincial boss (Nyanza) of the Maendeleo ya Wanawake organization.
But Moi did not remarry after divorce, perhaps out of respect and ‘fidelity’ to Lena and the family. Lena on her part was said to have maintained a room in her house ‘as a shrine to her former husband’ whom she believed would eventually come back to her when the politics was done. We cannot say if Moi was staid and celibate – actually rumors of dalliances with school headmistresses persisted during his reign as president and at one point one Marianne Brinner Marten surfaced to make sensational claims about being Moi’s secret lover. But all these were just that; rumours and unsubstantiated claims. In general, however, Moi biographer Andrew Morton talks of a lonely Moi.
Now, Philip Okundi did not waste much time after Phelgona’s demise. He has remarried. And lucky Philip too, he has found himself a mature, stable woman. They are of course not in short supply! Moi on the other hand continues to wallow in matrimonial loneliness. All the medical expertise of Dr. David Silverstein, the organizational prowess of John Lokorio or the sympathetic outpourings of 35 million Kenyans cannot replace the feminine comforts of a caring wife.
I fully agreed with Desmond Tutu when he urged Nelson Mandela to marry saying Mandela ‘needed a shoulder to cry on’; and so does Moi. Philip Okundi has set a very good example that other widowers might want to follow.
Mzee Moi should remarry, and soon.
By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher. Socrates (469 BC – 399 BC)
