Winning lotteries is second nature for this very lucky farmer

For many of us, hitting the jackpot in any lottery would be a dream of a lifetime.

Not so for a 62-year-old former nursing officer.

Mr Alex Ashford Riithi Kathuni considers winning the lottery such an everyday occurrence that any prize below Sh100,000 is petty cash.

The sheer number of times he has won the Kenya Charity Sweepstakes has taken the novelty of winning out for him.

Mr Riithi has a Midas touch able to turn most raffle tickets he buys into a win.

“I have won countless times since I started playing the Kenya Charity Sweepstakes in 1971. Sometimes I win Sh50,000, other times Sh20,000 or less, but it is the really big wins that have made the difference for me,” he says.

Kenya Charity Sweepstakes officials recently paid their most ardent player and winner a visit at his Lanet farm in Nakuru county.

He has turned winning the lottery into a career that has seen him construct a three-bedroomed house on his two-acre land.

He is also constructing several rental houses next to his house.

So what is the secret behind his big wins?

“I don’t think about winning. The sweepstakes for me is a charitable cause. Win or lose, I know that the money I have invested is doing good and helping someone in need,” Mr Riithi, who comes from Chuka in Meru South, told Saturday Nation during an interview at his home, where he lives with his wife, Lydia Mkwanjeru, 57.

An accomplished farmer, Mr Riithi cultivates maize, vegetables and fruits.

While Lady Luck has seemingly reserved her smile for him.

His second-born daughter and his mother-in-law are christened Charity, a fact that he says discouraged him from naming his estate Charity Farm, after the lottery that enabled him to acquire it.

“My 28 year-old daughter, who is married, is called Charity Gacheri, while my mother-in-law is called Charity Kaimuri. I wasn’t going to name my property Charity Farm, though I seriously considered it,” he says.

After 35 years of marriage, the couple has four children and five grand-children.

All of them, except the last born son, are married and live away from home. And all of them, including their mother Lydia, have tried a hand at the lottery with little success.

“It seems the luck belongs to him. The children have tried. I have also tried. But after several attempts, we gave up,” says Ms Mkwanjeru.

Mr Riithi, who runs a private clinic in Nakuru, says he started playing the country’s longest running lottery while still living with his brother in Nairobi.

One of his brother’s friends paid them a visit one day with the good news that he had won Sh25,000, which in the 1970s was quite a sizeable amount.

He then decided to give it a go. The first raffle ticket he invested in got him a Sh200 prize, which he used to buy his very first suit worth Sh180, with the balance of Sh20 going to a pair of shoes he swears were quite costly then.

“I then became a frequent player. In fact, up to date, I cannot see a Charity Sweepstakes ticket booth and just pass by without buying a ticket,” Mr Riithi says.

His first big win came in May 2004. He bought a Sh30 raffle ticket at New Peekars Lodge on Mburu Gichua Street in Nakuru town. On scratching the ticket, he discovered he had won Sh100,000.

Barely six months later, in November 2004, Mr Riithi won Sh400,000. Together with his first big win, which he had saved, he used the money to purchase land in Lanet and started to build his house.

In October 2006, he again won Sh100,000, which he used to put the finishing touches to the house.

The last time he won big was in February last year. He won Sh500,000. The vendor who sold him that ticket was his longtime friend, 62 year-old John Mugo Musuku.

Mr Riithi used the money to buy the plot adjacent to his farm for Sh300,000, where he is putting up the rental houses.

As a parting shot, the man who has the Kenya Charity Sweepstakes to thank for everything has this to say: “Charity is a good thing. I would encourage many other Kenyans to buy the charity sweepstakes because the proceeds will go towards helping orphans and other vulnerable individuals.”