Sylvia: My husband was hardworking and gave a lot of himself to others

Sylvia Moi, wife of the late Jonathan Moi places a wreath on his grave during his burial at Kabimoi in Baringo County, yesterday. [Kipsang Joseph, Standard]

Sylvia Toroitich, who lived with Jonathan Toroitich Moi for three and a half decades, recalls how she met the President’s son who was to become her husband.

“We met in 1981 when Jonathan bought a piece of land next to my father’s in Eldama Ravine. I was still in school then. Everybody heard that the president’s son had bought land in the area and we were all scared of him,” she said at the Lee Funeral Home when relatives came to pick her husband’s body.

However, it was only after she finished her A-Levels that their relationship took off.

By then, she stated, people in the area, including her, had gotten to know about what a good-hearted and humble man JT was. She says, “You wouldn’t even know he was the president’s son”.

Extraordinarily humble

But before their courtship, Sylvia admitted to having insecurities over their differing social classes. “He was a president’s son yet my father was a pastor. I did not think I belonged to his class,” she says.

In spite of her fears, the couple fell in love and got married in 1984, three years after they first met.

Sylvia describes her late husband as an extraordinarily humble man who uncharacteristically disregarded his rich and privileged background to befriend and help out his neighbours and the many ordinary Kenyans he interacted with.

Sylvia also described her marriage to Jonathan as easy, mostly since he was an open man. “He liked good food and often invited his neighbours for barbecues. He gave a lot of himself, his time and money to others, visiting the sick in hospitals and engaging in other forms of charity.”

It was these acts of endless kindness that endeared Jonathan to her.

Yet that was not all. Despite the many comforts afforded to him because of his status as a president’s son, Sylvia says that JT was a hardworking man.

“He used to get up at 3 or 4am and would work until late,” she says. She recalls that her late husband treated everything with importance, whether it was his family or rallying.

With a tender voice, Sylvia described their life together as fun, recalling how they liked to travel together, often crisscrossing the country as they went hiking, toured game parks, visited the coast and went for safari rallies and election campaigns together.

First co-driver

“I was actually his first co-driver,” Sylvia says with a smile. But their fun times, according to Sylvia, went down a notch when they started having children, although they still travelled together as a family.

But now, with her husband of 35 years gone, Sylvia says, she finds solace in knowing that because of her late husband, she has children who take after him, including a son who is an avowed rally driver.

Their daughter, Barbara speaks of how she enjoyed her father’s laugh, confessing that it is what she will miss the most about him.