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Senator Millicent Omanga’s father died in 1999 when she was in Form Four at Mumbi Girls High School. The estate he left the wife and his seven children included a five-bedroom home on almost two acres of land in Rimpa, Ongata Rongai, in Kajiado County.
Hitherto relatively well off, the Omanga family was suddenly destitute.
Forced by the circumstances of her husband’s death, Omanga’s mother, Joyce, had to break rocks from the family’s piece of land to fill wheelbarrows of kokoto which she sold to support her family.
Mzee Omanga, a mechanic with the Postal Corporation of Kenya, died shortly after midnight in a road accident, exactly a week after taking his first born daughter, Millicent, back to Mumbi Girls High School for her second term.
According to multiple sources who spoke to The Nairobian during his funeral, her father’s relatives mocked Joyce for giving birth to five girls in a row.
A week after his death, a delegation from Kiamukama village in Kisii descended on Rimpa and protested the widow’s plan to bury her husband in Rongai.
“Abuses were hurled at Joyce. They mocked her for only giving birth to girls. They insisted that Mzee Omanga must be buried in Kiamukama. They promised to help her take care of the seven children only if her husband was buried in the village. She later gave in to their demands,” says a neighbour.
However, the family never contacted her mother until the media reported that the daughter was running for an elective post.
After the burial, Joyce returned to Nairobi with her children. She started blasting stones on her husband’s farm and chipped them into small pieces for kokoto which she sold. She also took advantage of the river at the edge of her farm and started growing sukuma wiki, spinach and assorted vegetables, which she sold to her neighbours to feed and educate her children.
Because of the financial hardships that faced the family, Omanga was unable to proceed to university after Form Four, but a well-wisher sponsored her to join Medical Training College (MTC).
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