Granny, 109, born before there was cake

By Esther Wanjiku

When she was born only white settlers could eat cake, Africans did not know what it was. The railway was still under construction, there were eno roads and the region that is Kenya was then known as British East Africa Protectorate.

Last week, she savoured a cream-coated cake to mark her 109th birthday and recalled milestones in her life that sound like chapters in the history of Kenya.

Rocking her head slowly to the tune of gospel music playing from a radio, Naomi Wanjiku Nduru bared a toothless gum in a broad smile as she joked, "I still feel like a girl".

During her birthday, celebrated at a house in Bangladesh Estate, Nakuru, she was surrounded by grandchildren and great grandchildren who revelled in the presence of their family scion.

Speaking in a shrill voice in Kikuyu language, Wanjiku acknowledges that she is one of few people in the world to attain 100 plus years.

Naomi Wanjiku is fed cake by her great grandchild Tiffany Wambui and, inset, the birthday cake. Photo: Boniface Thuku/Standard

She remains seated most of the time when she is awake but she can still walk with the aid of a walking stick and remembers the most important things in her life, her late husband and children.

Her husband and five children have all passed away, leaving her under the care of her grandchildren.

According to Wanjiku’s granddaughter, Jane Wacuka, her grandmother was born on December 19, 1900 at Gatundu in Kiambu. The date of birth was specifically recorded by European missionaries who worked in the area then and she managed to keep the record.

British colony

Kenya was declared a British colony when she was 20 years old. Then, she recalls, the only money available were cent coins which had a hole in the middle.

She recalls that many young men in her village were then conscripted to go fight in a war — that was the Great War. She also recalls similar happenings around 1940s, during the Second World War.

Most of the tales she regales her grand children with revolve around the Mau Mau freedom struggle. She grew up in Gatundu with her parents before getting married to John Githire Nduru who had four wives. She was his second wife.

After she got married, her husband moved with his family to Eldama Ravine then later to Tanzania where he worked for about ten years. The other wives were left in Kenya while the man only took Wanjiku with her.

"Life was good then and there were few hardships," she says when asked about those days.

She left her five children with her co-wives as she moved to Tanzania since they all lived as one big family in one compound. They later returned home when her husband retired. He died in 1978. Wacuka says she has been taking care of her grandmother for the last 20 years.

Wacuka says "My grandmother loves traditional food like arrow roots, cassava, sweet potatoes and ugali."

Her secret

Wacuka said she thinks one of the secrets of her grandmother’s long life is taking life easy and being jolly.

"She is ever happy, smiling, laughing and likes to be around people a lot," said Wacuka.

"My grand mother is a very jovial person and I think that is one of the secrets why she has lived this long," she said.

Nduru always entertains her grand and great grandchildren with tales of how the country was before Independence.