Down memory lane with a great selfless patriot; Odindo Opiata

We left Cardinal Otunga High School, Mosocho, on Tuesday 21 November 1978. Much of the weekend had been spent lazing or loitering around the school and its environs.

The stamina for revision had steadily dissipated after our penultimate paper, almost ten days earlier.

We offloaded our few earthly belongings to the villagers, the same way the class of 1977 had done. School shirts, trousers, sports shoes, books; anything that money could fetch, we gave them away for a song.

We would use the money on Tuesday evening, experimenting with the ways of the free world.

A villager who wanted to buy socks from Odindo Opiata looked at the vendor’s feet. He was disappointed that they were rather small.

So do you want to buy the socks or do you want my feet?” Odindo quipped, “If you want to buy the feet we can also discuss, but let us finish with the socks first.” That was James Odindo Opiata, brilliant, charming and witty per excellence. Our first meeting was in May 1977. We both ran foul of a dog dragging white teacher. We later learned he was called Brother Joseph.

Our class renamed him Old Salomano, after the character who was always dragging his dog after him in Albert Camus’ text The Outsider.

My offence was the modish Jackson Five cap that I arrived in the school donning, on the first day.

Odindo’s was his beard. “What stupid boy is this, wearing a stupid cap on his first day at Cardinal Otunga High School?” My cap was rudely doffed off my head. I never saw it again.”

Old Salomano turned to Odindo, who was waiting outside Brother Innocent’s office, next to me, “And who is this one with a crass Marxist beard? Do you intend to stay in school looking like this?”

Fortunately for Odindo, his beard could not be disposed of with the same ease as my Jackson Five. He kept it to the very end. There was little Old Salomano could do about it, except sneering.

Coincidence bound us together beyond our slapdash encounter with Old Salomano. We ended up together in Ramogi House. We took the same subjects; English, History and Divinity.

We had common interest in debate, theatre and writing. Odindo took over from Boaz Olao the position of Editor of The Cardinal Points and The Mosocho Weaverbird.

With Jackson Reuben Masese and Cyrille Nabutola, we launched the debating and drama clubs. We put up Wole Soyinka’s The Lion and the Jewel for the Schools’ Drama Festival in 1978. We did a sterling job, in our estimation. The Dutch Brothers who ran the school thought we were introducing, in Mosocho, things that were hitherto anathema. Why, we had even got a couple of girls’ schools to visit us for joint functions. There was need to arrest this budding trend.

The Brothers aborted our effort to participate in the schools’ drama. They, however, allowed us to participate in the West Kenya Schools Debating Competition for that year.

Odindo and I represented Mosocho in the contest at Kisumu Boys High School. We upset Onyango Paddy, who was the overall individual winner. By coming second and third after him, we carried the coveted winning school prize to Mosocho.

We met Paddy again the following year, as freshmen at the University of Nairobi. Paddy was in my Political Science and Philosophy class while Odindo offered Law. The Kanu government banned the Nairobi University Students Organisation (Nuso) when we were only a few days on campus.

Some of the leaders; Rumba Kinuthia, Mukhisa Kituyi and Otieno Kajwang’ were expelled. It was Odindo who led the effort, the following year, to revive Nuso under the new acronym of Sonu.

He worked together with others like David Murathe, Onyango C. A., Onyango Paddy, Saulo Busolo, Isaac Rutto and Aoko Midiwo.

The effort was, however, short lived. The government scuttled the initiative sometime in April 1981. Kanu leaders were miffed by our support for doctors who were then on strike.

The contention was that the government would not allow medics to work in government and engage in private practice at the same time. There was also an Odinga by-election factor in Bondo in the bargain.

The government barred Jaramogi from contesting in a by-election after Josiah Ougo had resigned from Parliament to pave the way for Jaramogi. Odindo, Busolo, Rubik and a couple of others were expelled.

Moses Wetangula, James Kelonye and Justin B Muturi went to the Nation House on Tom Mboya Street to disown the students’ protests. They asked the editors at The Daily Nation not to disclose their names. The editors obeyed. But they published their photographs without the names; because they did not ask them not to publish the photos. Muturi and Wetang’ula got into instant trouble with the rest of the students.

Odindo went on to Dar es Salaam, where he got his degree in Law. We would meet again at the University of Nairobi in 1985. This time he was a postgraduate student in Law and me in Mass Communications. Once again, his career at the UoN was short lived. On the Thursday preceding Easter in 1986, he left for some transactions at his bank.

I waited in vain for him and some cash he had promised me. He did not show up after Easter either. Two weeks later, I saw his photograph on the front page of a local daily under the headline, “Mwakenya, Varsity student jailed six and a half years.” My head went into a spin.

Odindo was among the victims of the infamous Nyayo House torture chambers. He was incarcerated alongside other students like Oduor Ongwen, Wafula Buke, Mwandawiro Mghanga, among others. He graduated from the dungeons to serve as a lawyer of conscience. While this ought to be an oxymoron, in reality it is not.

Odindo served at Kituo Cha Sheria with people like the Chief Justice Willy Mutunga, Justice Jane Ngugi, Kamotho Waiganjo and Gichira Kibara. He took on a number of strategic public interest cases in Garissa and in the slums of Nairobi. He served on the task force on National Land Policy that eventually led to the formation of the National Land Commission.

James Odindo Opiata passed on last week, as a result of liver cancer. He will be missed by his family, thousands of friends and tens of thousands of poor people in Kenya’s urban slums. Odindo spent the last days of his life agitating for enactment of the Resettlement and Evictions Bill into law. It would be a great tribute to this selfless patriot for Parliament to enact this Bill into law.