Sky Eclat
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- Oct 17, 2012
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In the 1960s and early 1970s, Lena Tungo Moi strode Kenya’s political scene with her visibility as the vice-president’s wife.
Then in the middle of the 1970s, she faded away from the public arena never to be heard of again until her death in 2004.
The collapse of her marriage in 1974 and divorce in 1979 was a bitter blow to the ardent Christian who had been raised under strict African Inland Church (AIC) doctrines.
Lena’s parents, the Paul Bomett family, were pioneer Christians in Eldama Ravine.
They respected Moi, the young, tall, handsome and well-mannered orphan boy.
That is how Moi found himself in the Bometts’ home, where he silently admired Helena, the beautiful girl with a round face.
It was at the Bometts’ that Moi sought shelter during school holidays, unable to return home, 160 kilometres away, like the older boys.
He would also stay at the home of the Christian family of Isaiah Chesire, the father of Kanu’s nominated MP, Zipporah Kittony, and former Eldoret North MP, Reuben Chesire.
Moi’s father, Kimoi arap Chebii, had died in 1928. Moi was only four then and little is known about his mother, Kabon.
ELDER BROTHER BECAME GUARDIAN
What is known is that his elder brother, Tuitoek, became his guardian and that he was one of the herdsboys from Sacho location recommended to join the new Africa Inland Mission (AIM) School at Kabartonjo in 1934 before it was shifted to Kapsabet.
Lena, born in 1926, was also a student at the AIM School in Eldama Ravine before she joined Tenwek Girls’ Boarding School in Kericho.
A devout Christian, she, together with her brother William Bomett and sister Dina, became the face of educated converts.
After exposure in the US with some Christian families, Lena had returned to become a primary school teacher and would visit local churches accompanied by Moi. They would each carry a Bible.
“She was an iron lady but with a great sense of humour,” recalled Paul Chemirchir in Moi’s biography, The Making of An African Statesman, by Andrew Morton.
It was during this period that Lena started dating Moi, whose promotion to principal at Tambach (he was recommended by education officer Moses Mudavadi, the father of one of Moi’s vice-presidents, Musalia Mudavadi) shoved him into stardom in the region, first as a teacher, then as a preacher.
A year after Moi returned from training at Kagumo Teachers College, he married Lena in a ceremony conducted by the Reverend Erik Barnett.
The choice of Erik Barnett was apt. Whereas the Barnett family was instrumental in Moi’s education, Erik’s younger brother, Paul, had baptised Lena — his first duty after returning to Kenya as a missionary.
He also built Moi’s first house. Again, while Moi was in Tambach, and as Paul was going through the region opening churches and schools, he would sleep at Moi’s house.
The relationship was much deeper than that. Erik’s father, Albert Barnett, had left Australia in 1907, believing that God had called him as a missionary to Kenya.
Then a bachelor, Barnett had boarded a steamship to Mombasa and travelled towards Lake Baringo, where he lived among the Tugen in what is today Kabarnet before settling at Eldama Ravine. Kabarnet town is named after him. It means “the place of Barnett”.
INTENSE DEVOTION TO CHRISTIANITY
This started influencing a generation of African Christians whose intense devotion to the faith was impeccable. With his wife Elma, they built a mission station at Eldama Ravine where a large number of missionary families started converting locals into the faith.
At times when Moi was not staying with the Bomett family, he would stay with the Barnetts. It is here that the story of Kapkorios Toroitich arap Moi and Helena Bomett, later Lena Moi, started.
Moi had taken off to the mission hoping to get an education at the Barnetts-run African Inland Mission.
They would wake up at 6am, work in the vegetable gardens and haul gallons of water from the river to the station. In the afternoon, they would sit with Barnett’s Swedish wife, Elma, to learn numbers.
The Barnetts made Moi the Sunday school teacher at an early age as they encouraged him to take a leadership role in the church. By 1942, he was the school captain of the government school, with Paul and Erik Barnett as his peers — the two missionary sons of Albert Barnett.
It is this close relationship that saw Erik officiate the wedding of Moi to Lena in 1950 at the AIC mission in Eldama Ravine after he paid two heifers, one ox, and four sheep to the Bomett family. Moi’s long-time friend, Francis Cherogony, was the best man.
With the marriage, Lena abandoned her career as a teacher and immersed herself into bringing up her family, settling down with Moi at Tambach Government School, where his first two children, Jennifer and Jonathan Kipkemboi, were born in 1952 and 1953, respectively.
Although most of those who knew Moi in the 1950s thought he would make an excellent preacher, Moi liked teaching more than anything else. Things took a new twist for Lena in 1955, when her husband was appointed to the Legco to replace the inefficient John ole Tameno.
Moi bought a Land Rover and opened a posho mill in south Baringo, then started spending his early years of marriage crisscrossing the Rift Valley as the region’s senior-most politician at the height of the emergency.
QUIET TEACHING LIFE
The quiet teaching life that the couple had anticipated was gone as Moi moved out of the school compound with his family for Nairobi. “He now dressed in suits and ties rather than the shorts and long socks that had been his trademark as a teacher.
He and his family were better fed, eating a richer diet than they had ever had before,” wrote Moi’s biographer.
But Moi’s political relationship with his in-laws was not always at its best. The fallout with the Bometts appeared to have started in the 1961 election when his brother-in-law, Eric Bomett, stood against him as an independent candidate in the General Election.
It was not personal. It was a matter of principle,” Eric would later say. Although Eric would enter Parliament as a Specially Elected Member on a Kanu ticket, it was Moi’s Kadu that carried the day, eclipsing Kanu in the region.
As Moi was on the move in the pre-independence politics, Lena became a housewife. In an interview in 1967, she said it was necessary that the children were cared for by their own mothers if they were to grow up mentally and physically healthy.
“She is equally assiduous about looking after her husband, who enjoys her cooking and only eats outside the home when he has to,” veteran journalist Faraj Dumila, who conducted the interview, wrote.
Moi would also remark: “I owe her much of my success in the service of my people and my country. She has always been an encouraging factor in all aspects of my political life.”
Helen Bomett alizaliwa mwaka1926, wazazi wake walikua washiriki na wasambazaji wa dini ya Kikristu. Familia ya Paul Bomett. Helen ambae alijulikana kama Lena Moi baada ya kuolewa na Daniel Arap Moi mwaka 1950.
Famila ya Lena ilikuwa ya watoto watatu, Dina na William. Lena alisoma Eldama Ravine shule ya Christian Inland Mission na baadae Tenwek Girls Boarding School. Wakati Moi alisoma shule ya kanisa hilo hilo iliyokua Kabatonjo na baadae ilihamia Kapsabet.
Baada ya wazazi wake kufariki Moi alilelewa na kaka yake Tuitoek. Alijulikana kama mmoja wa vijana wachungaji wa Sacho mpaka 1934 alipopata nafasi ya kujiunga na shule ya African Inland Mission School huko Kabartonjo. Kwakua Moi alikuwa yatima, likizo alikwenda kuishi na familia ya Bomett.
Sehemu nyingine Moi aliyoishi mbali na familia ya Bomett ilikua katika famila ya Barnett. Albert Barnett mzaliwa wa Australia, alifika Kenya mwaka 1907 kueneza dini.
