Mama Lucy Kibaki's letters to her school principals

Letters that the late Mama Lucy Kibaki wrote to principals at Alliance Girls’ High School reveal an interesting side of her days as a student.

The school’s administration is preparing a report to celebrate her life, which will be released next week. The file contains her progress reports and letters that she wrote to the principals, Miss Turner and Lady Mary Bruce.

The current principal, Dorothy Kamwilu, is proud to talk about the contents of the file. She was registered as Lucy Muthoni Kagai, admission number 83, showing she was among the first girls admitted to the Alliance Girls High School in 1953, when it was the only secondary school then that would admitted African girls. “She seems to have been a very bright girl and well behaved,” says Ms Kamwilu.

She performed well in Geography, Domestic Science (cookery and needlework), English Language and Literature. The principal’s comments on her school report are “Very Good,” while the then deputy principal wrote that she was very keen on games and community work, which consisted of hospital visits, teaching Sunday school and taking care of the elderly in the neighbouring community.

After she left the school in 1956, Mama Lucy maintained correspondence with her former principal. “I really admire the fact that she kept in touch with her principal even after leaving school,” she says.

“My dear Miss Turner,” her letters would begin, though sometimes she would omit the word “My.” She would then tell the principal how she was fairing on and find out how the school was doing.

It is evident they had a cordial relationship with Miss Turner, who would respond to her letters beginning with “My dear Lucy”, sometimes referring to her as “Lucy Muthoni wa John.” John was her father, The Rev John Kagai of Mukurweini, who was a minister in the Presbyterian Church of East Africa (PCEA).

Had strong views

While Kamwilu will not let outsiders read the letters out of respect for the family and the State, she lets us in on some of the contents of the letters, and even from a distance, one can tell that her handwriting was excellent. “Her handwriting was very good,” says the principal.”

“From the letters, it is quite clear that she really loved the school and was very proud of it and of having been a student here,” she says. “She must have been a very nice girl.”

“It looks like she was also very hardworking,” she adds. “In her letters, she talks about staying up late in the night to set twelve exams and wondering how she would mark them all,” she says. This was just after high school while she was teaching at the African Intermediate School in Embu.

The letters also show that she was determined to send some of her students to Alliance Girls. “She worked so hard to ensure some students were admitted to her former school and within a year three of them joined the school after doing extremely well under her tutelage,” says Kamwilu.

Mama Lucy seemed to have been excited about this and wrote to the principal to inform her that the girls would be joining the school, giving their details.

The former First Lady was prayerful going by her letters as she kept saying, “I am praying for you and for the school, and that the girls will do well.” Her assertive and domineering character was however not lost on anyone, even when she became a teacher at Kambui College. Rev John Gatu, now 91-years-old, was an administrator at the school and he remembers this vividly.

“She had very strong views. If Lucy said she was not going to talk to you, nothing in the world would make her talk,” he says. “Even with students, if she decided that she was not talking to them and would only use the blackboard, that is exactly what she did. She was very strict.” The communication between Mama Lucy and her former principal, particularly Lady Bruce, who came after Ms Turner, went on for three years, between 1957 and 1960.

It is not clear why she stopped writing in 1960, but coincidentally, this was the year she met Mwai Kibaki, who was very fond of her and would visit her at the school. “I remember him coming to see her in Kambui as a student from Makerere in a white shirt, white pair of shorts and socks.”

“After reading the letters, I’m not shocked that she came out the way she did as the First Lady,” says Kamwilu.