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| The Life and Times of a Neglected British Goodwill Ambassador in Kenya and Abroad |
 PRINTABLE VERSION |
From 1984 to 1986, Mr. Achieng’ was engaged by a prominent Kenyan law firm, Schoffield Associates. Anna Schoffield, the senior partner at the firm and currently living in Jamaica, was linked to the connoisseur Chef through Mr. Francis Wasunna, a high-flying lawyer and senior advocate of the then law firm Wasunna and Ombija. Mr. Wasunna is now a senior partner in another Kenyan law firm, Wasunna and Wasunna Advocates. His former partner is now the High Court of Kenya Justice Hon. Nicholas Ombija. Mr. Wassunna remains a close friend and confidante of Mr. Achieng’.
In 1987, Mr. Achieng’ was taken up at McCann Ericsson. He worked there until 1991, when he began to experience recurrent eye problems. Always a hard working man, retiring home was not his best wish, yet he could do nothing.
In his lifetime and career, Mr. Achieng’ has met the who is who of the global society. While in Moscow, he remembers at one time accommodating the current Bondo Member of Parliament, Dr. Oburu Odinga, then a student in the former Soviet Union. During the same period, Hon. Oburu’s younger brother, who is now the Member of Parliament for Langata, Hon. Raila Odinga, used to pay them regular visits from his East German undergraduate base. Kenya’s founding Vice President, the late Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, the father of the two political supremos was also a personal friend of Mr. Achieng’.
Others included the late Mulu Mutisya, a Kamba Eastern Kenya political head. His friendship with Mr. Achieng’ witnessed him officiating at a fundraiser in the aid of Mr. Achieng’s pet school project in Bar Mathonye village, Kisumu Rural Constituency. Many senior government officials, professionals and university dons across the globe who were African students in the former Soviet Union, know Mr. Achieng’ as a humble, fatherly and caring man. Dr. Odhiambo Olel, then a medical student in Russia, nostalgically remembers the shirt Mr. Achieng’ bought for him in Moscow. The Kisumu City medic, who was also the personal doctor to the late Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, still reveres the old chef.
Mr. Achieng’s photo album is splashed with pictures of him in his halcyon days posing with diplomats, senior government officers and even students in Kenya and the former Soviet Union. Some show him in Helsinki, Finland among other countries. Students who got to know the astute Mr. Achieng’ and even posed for snapshots with him, included Martin Otaro, currently an animal scientist and senior lecturer in the Faculty of Agriculture of the Egerton University in Kenya, and Mr. Michael Otito, currently a senior agricultural officer in Western Kenya. Professor Jalan’go Akello, a senior Kenyan academician and a former student in the Soviet Union, is still a close friend of the now visually impaired old man, regularly paying him impromptu visits.
In his heyday Mr. Achieng’ was a dedicated philanthropist, hard worker and a disciplinarian - qualities he has maintained to date, and which have endeared him to countless individuals. Many not only in his district, but across Africa attained their education because of his open-heartedness; an attribute, which he says, was cemented greatly by his interaction with the British personalities. That it seems, has to a little extent, trickled back into his lifestyle even as he is immobilized by blindness, and without any source of income. He admits though that some of those he had previously assisted, as well as a few well wishers, have been good to him giving him drugs and subsistence whenever they pay him a visit. Some send him gifts even today.
Mr. Achieng’ has witnessed the demise of his three daughters and a son from his verandah seat. The eldest, Mrs. Francisca Awitti Olang’ passed on in 1991, just a few weeks on arrival from Osaka Japan, where she had gone to present at an International Conference for Agricultural Journalists. She was the editor of the Kenyan agricultural newsletter, ‘Kilimo News’ and a senior officer with the Ministry of Agriculture under the Agricultural Resource Centre; and was educated at Reading and Egerton Universities in England and Kenya respectively.
A son, David Odhiambo, breathed his last in 2002, while his other daughter passed on due to labor complications in 1993. The youngest, a daughter, Pamela Werner Lorenz, fondly named after Lady Pamela Allison, who was married to a German citizen and living with her in-laws and husband in Guxhagen Germany, passed on in early 2004. His eldest wife also departed this life in 1997 as a result of diabetes-induced complications.
Mr. Achieng’ now remains with only a son and a daughter from his eldest wife. The two have often tried their best in providing for the now frail and blind old man; but with families of their own, it has been more of an exercise in futility, as what they give out is never enough to sustain him and his young family from the second wife.
His first wife had in the early 1970s pressed him to take a second wife to ‘take care of him’ when both of them were getting old. They have young children, some of whom are still going through primary school. Another son from his second wife passed on in March 2006 after a protracted struggle with HIV/AIDS related illnesses. The overall result for Mr. Achieng’ has been emotional and financial besiegement, as all of this has required, and still needs, his monetary and moral attention.
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Antony Felix O. Simbowo
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