The choirmaster who played the last note for Kenyatta speaks

• Ondego recalls his days as a confidante of Kenya’s first head of state -- and the sad day his friend died

Enock Ondego’s story begins in a village called Mazigolo, Kenya in what was then known as South Maragoli in Western province, where he was born in 1930. He started teaching at 17 and would soon leave for Nairobi to join the pre-independence clamour for African political rights, working with the likes of Tom Mboya, James Gichuru and Jaramogi Oginga Odinga We pick up his story shortly after independence after his attempts to run for the Mombasa parliamentary seat were thwarted by Kanu in favour of home-grown Juma Boy.

After being (rejected) by the new government I decided to go back to teaching. I was posted to Kwale district. I did not want to go to Maragoli.

“I taught at Samburu primary school near Maji ya Chumvi, on the main Mombasa-Nairobi highway. We were all very happy, and Kenya was celebrating – I started to compose songs crying for our struggle and praising our new country and the new leaders.

This is how I became the first teacher to sing for the president. When Kenyatta was on his way to Mombasa, I arranged that we would come to the road to cheer. I was the first in Kenya to do this. Before me choirs were only in churches.

Now there is something I have not told you.

In Nairobi things were terrible. Even if I was not a Gikuyu, I was very moved by the things the colonial government was doing. I saw a lot. I saw women in Shauri Moyo.

They made them sit with their legs open and their skirts hiked. Then – I am a man of God, it is improper to say this – the askaris molested them with Tusker bottles – the long Tusker bottles… they would put in between her legs and one would kick with all his strength, until the woman collapses.

It was this that made me start to compose.

Then, one day I saw a blue tractor with a harrow. There were Gikuyu women chained to the harrow with one hand, and to the bridge with the other, the bridge above the dirty water in Pumwani. There were 7 women.

They were asking them, “Where are your husbands?”

“We don’t know,” they were saying, “We don’t know.”

“So you die,” said one of the Askaris.

And one of the women said, “Then we will be with God.”

And so the tractor roared into action, and the women were dragged, and started to hit each other as they were stretched, and they were pulled until they died there. I saw everything...the blood, the screams…they kept calling God’s name. Ngai, Ngai.

I felt a lot of pain.

And that was the subject of the song I sang for Kenyatta, and when he heard my children singing, he cried.

We also sang the other song, Kenya’s most famous independence song. Did you know that I composed it?

The song is called “Huu ni Wimbo wa Historia (This is a Song of History)”:

This is a song of history, pray everybody, listen with all your ears/

In October 1952, we heard that Kenyatta had been arrested/