A peek into the lives, interests and ways of Kenya's first ladies

I think everyone, including all world leaders attending the recent G7 summit in France, did a double-take when Rachel Ruto delivered – in her usual ‘I live on another planet’ style – the breaking news that Kenya is self-sufficient in food security.

With this declaration, the prayerful Mrs Ruto demonstrated once again how totally unsuitable she is for any kind of diplomatic role or function, or even for appearance as a spousal appendage. It would be better for us all if she stayed on her knees at home praying for rain. Or not too much rain when it’s flooding.

Fortunately, not all our first ladies have been so disconnected from reality, but our presidents have certainly given us our fair share of fascinating other-halves and marital arrangements over the years.

Founding president Jomo Kenyatta married his first wife, Grace Wahu, in 1919, under Kikuyu customary law. Three years later, he married her again, this time in a legally binding church ceremony.

Twenty years after that, while studying in the UK during World War II, Kenyatta met Edna Clarke, a marine engineer who had recently lost both her parents in a German air raid.

Kenyatta no doubt lent a sympathetic ear. The two were married at a Sussex register office on May 11, 1942. The marriage certificate records his age as 37, hers as 32.

Kenyatta was actually 45. And that is not the document’s only untruth. It also records him as a bachelor, when he was legally married to Wahu.

The marriage to Edna was bigamous and a criminal offence under UK law, as well as in Kenya, then a UK colony, and was punishable in the UK by up to seven years in prison.

It was all a bit complicated, and when returning to Kenya in 1946, Kenyatta decided to leave Edna and their three-year-old son Peter Magana in the UK.

Back home, Wahu was now approaching middle age, and this evidently made taking another younger wife seem a good idea.

Younger was the operative word. Kenyatta, still legally married to Wahu, as well as bigamously to Edna, soon married 16-year-old Grace Wanjiku, Mbiyu Koinange’s younger sister. Kenyatta, at 49, was 33 years older than his child bride.

Tragically, Grace died in childbirth just four years later, in 1951.

Some time after his return from the UK, Kenyatta had been appointed principal of Githunguri Teacher Training College in Kiambu, and soon after Grace’s death his eye lighted on one of his teenage students, Ngina Muhoho, daughter of Chief Muhoho wa Gathecha, a prominent Kikuyu leader.

Kenyatta and Ngina married under customary law in 1951, when Ngina was 18 and Kenyatta at 54 some 36 years older. They remained married until Kenyatta’s death in 1978.

Ngina might have been young and green when she married, but she soon caught on after Independence, famously getting involved in the gemstone mining industry in Taita Taveta – a complicated history that was still this year having repercussions in court, with indigenous inhabitants seeking re-allocation of some of their land.

Land was a big target for the Kenyattas, and over the years they have acquired an estimated half-million acres, much of it initially through a government settlement scheme whose funds had actually been intended for the rehabilitation of landless citizens.

First lady Ngina (now aged 93) was allegedly involved in an ivory smuggling scheme in the 1970s, and was certainly by then one of the richest individuals in the country, owning plantations, ranches, and hotels.

In 2021, following a massive global investigation involving hundreds of journalists after an anonymous leak of the so-called Pandora Papers, Ngina was named as one of seven Kenyatta family members secretly owning 13 offshore companies in tax havens such as Panama and the British Virgin Islands.

Among the family’s offshore investments, just one of their companies had stocks and bonds worth US$30m (Sh3.9bn), and documents showed that a foundation called Varies, set up in 2003 in Panama, named Ngina as the first beneficiary, with her son Uhuru set to benefit upon her death.

Clearly, it has been quite a trajectory for this first lady, from teen bride to woman of untold wealth, with assets now estimated at Sh100 billion.

In order for us ordinary mortals to understand just how much Sh100 billion is, imagine spending Sh100,000 every single day of the year, seven days a week, year after year. It would take you 2,739 years – nearly three millennia – to use up Sh100 billion. Granted, you’d be pretty white-haired by then, and your cash wouldn’t be worth much, but you get the idea. It’s a lot of money.

In fact, it’s enough to build a referral hospital with 300 beds in every single county – at actual cost, without factoring in budgeted looting – and still remain with pocket-money of Sh30 billion. Or to build 306 hospitals, one in every sub-county, with 150 beds in each, and still have Sh8 billion left over.

And even if you had only one billion shillings and spent Sh100,000 per day, every day, it would still take you 27 years to finish the money. It’s almost beyond imagining.

The next holder of the first-lady title, Lena Moi, held it for only a very short time, from 1978 when her husband became president until their divorce the following year.

The two had met when the orphaned Moi stayed as a schoolboy at Lena’s family home and at the local African Inland Church Mission during his school holidays. Romance blossomed, and Daniel Kapkorios Toroitich arap Moi and pastor’s daughter Helena ‘Lena’ Tungo Bomett, by then both teachers, were married in 1950. 

Lena enjoyed local fame as the first African woman to wear a white, western-style wedding dress. Officiating at the ceremony was the Rev Erik Barnett, whose father had arrived from Australia as a missionary. The town of Kabarnet is named after him.

Lena was a humble person and a mother who retired from teaching to raise her children. She was loved by all and during Moi’s vice-presidency was very busy as second lady, ¬¬hosting harambees and working with women’s groups in the Rift Valley.

But Lena was hardly seen in the first lady role. She had moved to Nairobi to be with her husband, and the cause of their marriage break-down is unknown. Perhaps it was the pressures and compromises of politics, which might have weighed heavily on this extremely devout first lady.

After the divorce, a devastated Lena returned to the Rift Valley and faded from public view, though she remained active with women’s groups locally until her death, aged 74. Poignantly, for the rest of her life she had kept a room at her home dedicated to her husband, always expecting him to return to her.

Next up was Lucy Muthoni Kagai Kibaki, also a pastor’s daughter. An intelligent student, Lucy was educated at Alliance Girls and went on to become a teacher and a college principal.

She and Emilio Stanley Mwai Kibaki, a former Makerere university lecturer who was by then getting involved in Kanu politics, were married in 1961.

Once thrust into public life as first lady, Lucy took no prisoners. She has been considered a formidable power behind her husband.

She certainly left no doubt about what she expected of him soon after he became president in 2002, when she closed down a bar in State House to ensure he was focussed on state business and not just hanging out with his friends. Perhaps we have much to thank Lucy for when assessing Kibaki’s record.

Lucy supported programmes for disadvantaged and disabled people, and was chairperson of the Organisation of the 40 African First Ladies Against HIV/Aids. She was a staunch campaigner against female genital mutilation.

But sadly, in later life, Lucy appeared to suffer a mental decline that looked like some kind of dementia, although this was never publicly confirmed.

She took to outspokenly opposing anyone she thought had failed to give the Kibaki family sufficient respect.

This was evident when, dressed in pyjamas, she burst into a next-door neighbour’s house at midnight to upbraid him for playing music too loudly. The neighbour was World Bank country director Makhtar Diop, hosting a leaving party at the end of his Kenya stint.

Lucy, whose own children were at the party, had to be restrained from disconnecting the music equipment. The partygoers moderated their noisy celebrations, but Lucy returned twice more during the night to insult guests.

The resulting media coverage infuriated her further, and the following night, this time dressed in shorts, Lucy invaded the Nation offices, demanding arrests, slapping a cameraman, and refusing to leave until 5.30am.

On another occasion it was Francis Musyimi, a principal admin secretary in Kibaki’s office, who bore the brunt of her ire.

The hapless Musyimi shocked everyone at a State House function when a slip of the tongue led him to introduce Lucy as “Mama Lucy Wambui”, with Wambui actually being the name of the president's second wife, Mary Wambui, whose very existence kept Lucy’s temper permanently at boiling point. Musyimi earned a slap from Lucy and a hasty removal by security guards.

Throughout Lucy’s remarkable behaviour, Kibaki never publicly referred to his wife’s conduct, nor did he ever acknowledge that he had a second wife, and reportedly a daughter with her. His only reference to the matter came during an impromptu State House press conference on March 4, 2009, when, with Lucy standing militantly at his side, Kibaki firmly stated that he had “only one dear wife, Lucy, who is here.” No one knows what kind of discussion took place behind the scenes in the lead-up to this announcement. Lucy died in 2016.

Next came a true breath of fresh air – Margaret Wanjiru Gakuo Kenyatta. This seemingly delightful, modest, cheerful, committed woman is everything that’s needed in a head of state’s wife, always projecting grace and dignity.

Margaret (now aged 62) is the daughter of the first African and most-effective-ever Kenya Railways director, Dr Njuguna Gakuo, and his German wife Magdalena, and Margaret and Uhuru were married in 1989, after meeting when Uhuru was her older brother’s school friend.

As first lady, Margaret was active in social works. She established the Beyond Zero Campaign to create awareness of issues affecting maternal and child health and mother-to-child transmission of HIV, aiming for an HIV-free generation.

In 2014, she inaugurated the First Lady’s Half-Marathon and ran to raise funds for mobile clinics and local services to help end preventable newborn deaths.

She was vocal in urging people to seek early testing for breast, cervical and prostate cancer and for diabetes, and is a big supporter of various charity and educational programmes.

And it was not all hot air. During Uhuru’s tenure as president, key expansions and medical service initiatives included the Linda Mama Programme, which introduced free maternal care at all government health facilities, and the abolition of user charges at all government primary healthcare facilities (unfortunately, all inconsistently enforced), the upgrading of equipment at numerous county hospitals under the Managed Equipment Service, and the launching of the Kenyatta University Teaching, Referral and Research Hospital, which expanded the country's cancer treatment and research capacity.

As long as Margaret was first lady, practical good works reigned, and all was delivered with a smile and a sunny temperament.

And then what happened? We got landed with Rachel Chebet Kimeto Ruto, who appears to spend all her time, when not jetsetting alongside her husband, in evangelical supplication. In fact, if I were her God, I think I’d be quite tired of her incessant pestering.

Rachel has arranged countless national and other prayer events, while regularly hosting prayer meetings at State House. Evidently not fully trusting the efficacy of her own prayers, she has brought in American preachers and other intercessory prayer teams. Allegations that these expensive performers have been remunerated from public coffers have been denied.

Rachel also hosts regular intercessors at her office, reportedly paying them up to Sh200,000 per month. These fellows wake up early to speak in tongues and pray for the nation. God help Kenya.

The first-lady office had been earmarked for nearly Sh700 million in the 2024 budget, until the allocation was scrapped after a national outcry. The cancellation, explained her husband, was because “We are going to cut our coat according to the size of our cloth.” (Very humorous. I wonder what happened.)

Rachel has continued undeterred, hosting Friday night prayer vigils at State House – praying for everything she can think of, especially things that would benefit her husband, and periodically announcing the results of her prayers.

She has taken credit for the food security that doesn’t exist, for the ‘miracle’ of a dirty, salty borehole at her residence suddenly issuing forth clear drinking water, for Kenya’s ongoing “national peace, cohesion and forgiveness” (for which the rest of us seek in vain), for the childless woman she met and prayed over who subsequently gave birth to twins. Curiously, there doesn’t seem to be much she has prayed for that has helped alleviate the wider suffering of the majority poor of Kenya.

Rachel is a textbook example of a religious zealot. She boasts of being a “prayer warrior” and seeks to promote the entirely misplaced idea that faith is central to her husband’s policies. That’s our first lady – off in a fantasy world of her own.

But perhaps prayer is the only way Rachel can cope with the obscene excesses committed by her husband’s government – falling to her knees, tightly closing her eyes to it all, and pretending the crimes perpetrated by his administration do not exist.

We’ll be getting a new first lady next year. Whoever she might be, we can only hope for all our sakes that she showed more wisdom than most on that auspicious day some years ago – the day she chose her future husband.