I was on top of the world, then the wheels came off

She is always happy when she wakes up, grateful to have life after she almost lost it. Dennitah Ghati, Orange Democratic Movement nominated Member of Parliament (MP), is an enthusiastic lover of life. Her sunny outlook is infectious to those around her. She speaks animatedly, even if she is only speaking to me, a captivated audience of one.

Until the moment that changed everything forever, her life had been so great she says could hardly believe it.

“I am a village girl who became a global citizen!” she says. From growing up in the 1980s in a rural village in Kuria East constituency, she had risen to become a successful journalist at the Standard Group, gotten a Masters degree from an Ivy League university (Columbia) and at the relatively young age of 33, was then in parliament.

To crown it all, she had a beautiful baby girl, Brandy, that she always looked forward to returning to at the end of her long, fulfilling days. Life could not have been better.

When my life changed 

Then the tragic Tuesday happened. March 11, 2014. She had been in Migori County celebrating International Women’s Day and was headed back to Nairobi to attend a parliamentary sitting. She was the Migori Woman Rep in her first term in Parliament.

“When I reached Narok, around a place called Ntulele, the car’s tyre burst. I heard a loud bang, then I saw the driver grappling with the wheel, trying to stabilize the car but he failed. The car veered off the road, hitting everything it came across. We were lucky that there had been no oncoming vehicle because we would certainly have perished,” she recalls.

The vehicle rolled several times then everything went black. The sound of people coming to rescue them was what brought her back to the land of the living. Excruciating pain shot all over her body.

She did not yet know that she had lost the ability to walk.

Lady luck would not be attending to her that day. “There are things which, how they happen, you don’t understand,” she says. There were four people in the vehicle, but she was the only one who was severely injured.

“We were rushed to Narok District Hospital where I received first aid before Amref flew me to Nairobi Hospital,” she says.

She underwent a spinal cord surgery, then was taken for further treatment in India.

That was where the doctors finally told her that she had had a spinal cord dislocation, which robbed her of the use of her lower limbs. She had never imagined anything like it happening to her.

“Disability got me when I was at my peak. I was 33 years, and had just gotten into parliament, walking on my own two feet. I knew everything was going to be great. I had come from a poor and marginalised community and I had now made it,” she says.

And yet, all this threatened to take the shine out of everything she had achieved. What followed was a drawn out period of extreme denial that she could not walk.

“There is nothing as difficult as having to change your way of life as an adult. You have to learn everything from square one, like a toddler growing up,” she says.

On top of it, as a newly elected MP, she was urgently aware of the expectations her people back home for her to deliver on what she had promised. 

Forging ahead

Embattled within and without, with the help of support groups and friends she decided to charge ahead She accepted her membership into the disability club that she had not applied for, but now embraced.

“When Baba (Raila Odinga) gave me the nomination to represent persons with disability in the National Assembly, it also helped me understand myself, accept the situation because that is the kind of job I do on a daily basis. It has given me enough time to study myself and to understand the world of disability, to be able to know what exactly they go through,” says Dennitah. She has now been in a wheelchair for six years and considers herself lucky to have lived in both worlds.

“Because of that it is very easy to tell when my rights are being violated and that is what I am striving to change for all persons with disability. There is a lot of discrimination and intolerance for persons with disability,” she says.

The fervour that she had had as a journalist writing on gender-based issues, scoring her a scholarship in Columbia University in New York, and as the former Migori Woman Rep, is the same fervour she brought to her work in issues of disability.

As woman rep, she is credited with establishing and equipping the Awendo Youth ICT Center, putting up a women’s empowerment centre in Kuria East, establishing three market centres for women traders in Migori, among other achievements.

Working on issues of women empowerment with the League of Kenya Women Voters as the program manager when Ida Odinga was the chairperson was what motivated her to join politics.

“Dr Ida Odinga and Martha Karua are my role models and mentors. I owe it all to them,” she says.

My daughter is my pride and joy

Away from work, Brandy, her 10-year-old daughter, is her pride and joy.

“God gave me the perfect family, my daughter and I. I see myself a lot in her. She is very hardworking and my confidant. I am working to mold her into a great woman,” she says.

The Covid-19 pandemic has given them more time for them to spend together, but she says this is something she has always prioritised. 

“I am a very busy person but as parents we always have to create time for our children. Sacrifice for them. Expose them to issues early. We cannot afford to leave our children in the hands of everything and everyone that surrounds them nowadays. Let us tell them exactly what we want to hear, not let them get it from out there,” says Dennitah.

She is going to turn 40 in November, and once again, life is good, because she strives to make it so.

“Life has no manual. You define your own life. Whatever kind of life you live is based on how you shape it and turn it around even when it messes you up. It has put me down several times and it has also lifted me up. So it is also not guaranteed. No one has a monopoly on life,” she says.

When she is not working, you will find her exploring various locations and cultures locally and internationally. Or curled up with a book, reading international affairs. Other times she will be running her foundation, the Denittah Ghati Foundation which she established to give back.

Dennitah is fully settled into her new normal.

“I love what I do and what I am. If God wants me to walk at some point then he will do that at his own opportune time, but I have embraced myself and moved on,” she says.