Whispers through his mother’s eyes

By Murimi Mwangi

On Monday, Kenyans will commemorate the 10th anniversary of the death of the man who revolutionised Sunday’s reading habits through an authentic and indigenous humour writing technique.

It is this very fame that turned this man into a household name and saw his weekly column become a must read in the 1980s.

His articles mirrored the everyday life of poor Kenyans and occasionally condemned the leadership of the Moi government – the recipe for his arrest and detention for 15 months without trial. 

 Wahome Mutahi remains the undisputed king of humour a decade after his death.

Mutahi wrote the weekly Sunday humour column, Whispers, for the Standard on Sunday and later for the Sunday Nation. Four characters rarely missed from his column – his wife Thatcher, his daughter Pajero, his son the Domestic Thug and his mother Appepklonia.

A decade after his demise, we set out on a mission to unearth Mutahi’s roots. Nobody would be more instrumental in this than his mother.

The road to Appepklonia’s home is not very smooth. From Nyeri town, we drive for 15 minutes along the Nyeri-Tetu road. Two kilometres later, we take a right turn into a rough murram road.

We stop by the roadside to inquire how far Mama Whisper’s home could be. A young boy, in a tattered pair of jeans and holding a polythene paper ball, points at a white grilled gate about 10 metres to our left.

The gate is closed, and there is nobody in sight to usher us in. A white merino sheep tied to a patch of grass runs restlessly inside the compound, perhaps out of fear that we wanted to buy it for the butcher.

As we scheme our next course of action, an old woman walks towards us from behind the house. I am later to learn that we had just accomplished the first phase of our mission, meeting the famous Appepklonia! She greets and welcomes us into her semi permanent house. I am not yet convinced that this is where the iconic humourist was brought up, until I spot a metallic design of Mutahi’s portrait.

Below the portrait, the words, “If you tremble with indignation at any injustice, then you are a comrade of mine”, are inscribed.

The words’ bear every witness to the fact that they must have originated from Mutahi, who was a victim of torture and oppression for fighting for justice.

We set the TV equipment behind the house next to Mutahi’s grave as the 81-year-old Appepklonia begins to unravel the renowned humourist as she best knew him from his birth to death.

“I was never lucky enough to know why Wahome called me Appepklonia. But the name has slowly faded out. My name is Octavia Muthoni Mutahi, although my neighbours call me Mama Whispers,” she breaks the ice.

Apepklonia tells us that she is a mother of eight before narrating how she went through many hardships after she bore Mutahi in 1954.

“Those times were really bad because it was during the dreaded state of emergency and we lived just next to the Mount Kenya Forest where we were very prone to harassment by home guards,” she says.

Mutahi first enrolled to nursery school at the Tetu Catholic Centre, where the young crafty boy used to run away from school.

Appepklonia says Mutahi never wanted to go to school, but was afraid that his father would beat him if he discovered that he was playing truant.

“The boy was very cheeky and would never concentrate in class because he was busy mimicking his classmates behind the teacher’s back,” she says. After class seven, he was admitted to St Pauls Mathani Seminary, where he passed his Form Four exams with a division II.

It was expected that he would proceed with his studies at the seminary and become a priest. But Mutahi kept sneaking secretly from school, as he was afraid of being canned by his dad.

“I would have really wanted Mutahi to be a father, but I couldn’t force him because priesthood is a calling,” Appepklonia says.

Mutahi eventually ran away from the seminary. After two weeks, word got to his mother that he was living with a tea farmer who was popularly known as Naphtary.

“He really wanted to be transferred from the seminary because priesthood was not really his calling. He wanted us to get him a new school but would never say it for fear of his dad,” his mother says.

Nevertheless, his father got him a new school, where he did his A-level exams before proceeding to the university. He was later appointed a District Officer, a job he quickly quit. He disliked the job because it constrained him from visiting his home. “One thing Wahome hated about public holidays was being entertained by women the age of his mother, yet he, being a DO, could not visit his home as he had to read the President’s speech,” she said with a smile lighting her face.

He then joined the University of Nairobi for his master’s degree, after which he became a journalist. Octavia does not digress so much into the weekly articles in which Mutahi fondly called her Appepklonia.

“Getting a newspaper or even having the time to read it those days was not very easy, although I know Mutahi used to call me Appepklonia in his articles,” she says.

His mother still recounts the psychological torture she underwent when Mutahi was arrested and detained on allegations of sedition.

“Sometime in 1986, I got shocking news that Mutahi had been arrested with a man called Njoroge and taken to Marsabit for drafting what the Moi government called Mwakenya,” she says.

Appepklonia says she had to travel to Nairobi to find out what they—with her daughter-in-law-—could do to help mutahi.

 “At the home, police officers would occasionally come and demand that we produce the Mwakenya Mutahi had hidden,” she recounts. One day, some of Mutahi’s colleagues at the Daily Nation visited his home to inform them he would be taken to court that evening.

 “We rushed to the Nairobi Law Courts to find Mutahi and other Mwakenya suspects being hurled into the cell. We were not even allowed to talk to him,” she says, a tear trickling down her right cheek.

Wahome was later taken to Kamiti Maximum Prison before being detained at the Nyayo chambers, where he was tortured. 

The torture at the infamous chambers, Octavia says, would later cause his death. Appepklonia says Njoroge, the man arrested with Mutahi, was locked up in Kitale.

 “Writing was a calling for Mutahi, and I do not and will never regret that he was a scribe because he stood by what he wanted,” she says.