The making of a man-god

"Aaii! Toto, salimia wageni vizuri!” The two-year-old tot, dressed in a little grey jumpsuit and a marvin, follows the command to “greet visitors well” and hands over the roasted maize cob he has been nibbling on to his grandmother, then goes down on one knee and offers his tiny hand in salutation as he bows in respect to us, the visitors.

We are stepping on hallowed grounds inside Jehovah Wanyonyi’s homestead in Chemororoch village, Uasin Gishu County. We are approximately 30 kilometres from Eldoret town, but we could as well be on another planet, another galaxy.

Distance, really, can be deceiving.

Many villages have been described as “sleepy” and “lazy”; but you cannot stick those cliché adjectives onto Chemororoch, because this hamlet bustles with activity. Children have just closed school for the August holidays, and so they are all over the red-soil path leading to Jehovah Wanyonyi’s home.

This, in a nice, heart-warming way, seems like a good, vibrant place to live in. There is energy here. Human energy.

The white Toyota Hilux double-cab we are riding in sticks out here, its diesel drone announcing our arrival to — and at — Chemororoch. Tens of curious villagers crawl out of their huts as children pause their games. The shopkeeper who runs the one and only kiosk here — christened, curiously, Survive Kiosk — steps out to witness our esteemed arrival too.

Everyone knows who we are. We were expected, but they have also seen tens of journalists troop into their village in the past few weeks, hauling humongous cameras with lenses the size of a vuvuzela and treasured notebooks.

Today, though, even though we are expected, we are barely welcome. Nobody is willing to talk to us, or even allow us to take their picture.

We have come here with a fertile story idea in our minds, and it seems we might not get the voices we need to tell the story.

We want to capture the intrigues of sharing a fence with your god, the relationship between the man-god and one of his followers, and how that relationship has shaped the idealism and philosophy of the follower.

When did he or she meet the self-delared Jehovah? How was the first interaction? What were the impressions? Why shift from one sect to his? If we get a neighbour, any neighbour, to talk, we will have a good story to tell.

IS HE DEAD?

But no one is willing to talk to us about that, and so we change tack and drop the million-dollar question: “Is Jehovah Wanyonyi dead?”

“We don’t know,” says a neighbour. “Why don’t you ask his family?” She then points us to Jehovah Wanyonyi’s humble home, from where a gaunt, old man staggers towards us.

“Mkasa! Ulizeni Mkasa! (Mkasa! Ask Mkasa!)” the woman beams.

Mkasa, as we are to learn a few minutes later, is not the old man’s real name. He was born Samuel Kibet Samoei, but when he became a Luhya elder, he was baptised Mkasa, which loosely translates to “village elder” in the local tongue.

It is 2:00pm on this cool Thursday, and Mkasa is high on chang’aa, otherwise known here as vuta pumzi. He is Jehovah Wanyonyi’s neighbour. Okay, everyone is Jehovah Wanyonyi’s neighbour in this village, but Mkasa shares a fence with the big man.

He is accompanied by Monicah Chepkoech, also his neighbour and drinking buddy. Chepkoech is in a purple skirt, what looks like a man’s brown T-shirt, and rubber shoes. She is also kite-high on chang’aa.

We tell them that we want to talk to a Jehovah Wanyonyi neighbour, and that we are not really interested in his family because the story we want to tell remotely touches on the family.

And, in any case, the family has been particularly hostile to journalists, who have been following the controversy surrounding the disappearance and assumed death of the man who declared himself God.

“Nonsense!” says Mkasa. “Let me take you to his family… his wives... they will talk to you. If they see me, they will talk. But first you must promise to take a photo of me in my new suit.”

MY MAN, MY GOD

We, of course, promise, and minutes later Jehovah Wanyonyi’s two-year-old grandson is kneeling before us, bowing respectfully as his tiny hand gets lost in mine.

His grandmother, Sylvia Nangila, 53, is one of Jehovah Wanyonyi’s wives. She is the self-appointed spokeswoman of the six of Wanyonyi’s 70 wives who have remained true to his cause. The other wives, we are told, are scattered all over Kenya and Uganda.

“I was born in Jehovah Wanyonyi’s church, The Lost Israelites of Kenya,” Nangila starts. “I grew up in his church, and eventually married him, my god. Now I live for Jehovah Wanyonyi.”

HE IS IN NAIROBI

Nangila has 10 children. She doesn’t remember how old the eldest is, but she recalls her youngest is 11 years.

So where is Jehovah Wanyonyi? We ask her.

“He is in Nairobi,” she says “He is your neighbour in Nairobi. He is in hospital in the city. You people might not recognise him, but he is in Nairobi. If today he changed his clothes and walked on  the streets of Nairobi, would you journalists recognise him?”

We feign surprise. Jehovah Wanyonyi in Nairobi? So who is spreading that fat rumour that Jehovah is dead? Does she have any clue?

“Get out of my compound now!” she orders us in response.

We comply.

A few moments later, we are seated under a tree with Mkasa, who has no gainful employment but his 15 children never go a day without food.

He is the government-appointed village elder here, and so he spends his day between the small chang’aa den a few metres away, and people’s homes, settling disputes.

If two boys in the village have a fight, their parents will consult Mkasa. If a man and his wife have a tiff, Mkasa is the man to call. Land dispute? Look no further; Mkasa is your guy.

Those consultancy services, fortunately, come at a small, unofficial fee, which keeps him and his family going.

He has changed into a faded green jacket which looks four sizes too big; that was the new suit he was talking about. Before we start the interview, he has to prove to us that he is not an imposter, and so he pulls out an old, tattered, laminated card.

“This is my official identification as a government village elder,” he says as he settles down to answer our questions.

BOUGHT LAND

Mkasa first met Jehovah Wanyonyi in 2005. Three years before that, in 2002, a man by the name Eliab Masinde had approached Mkasa and his neighbour, Ms Monicah Chepkoech, and asked them to sell him a piece of land.

Mkasa had no land to sell, but Chepkoech and Mkasa’s brother had some to offer. Eliab paid for the land and then disappeared, only to return in 2005 with Jehovah Wanyonyi and his clan in tow.

This is when it dawned on Mkasa and his neighbours that Jehovah Wanyonyi had sent Masinde as a proxy. Mkasa had never heard of or seen Wanyonyi until the old man showed up. His first impression of Jehovah was that of a man revered by his many wives and children, but quite the lazy man who sat on his throne all day as his wives worked hard in the fields.

“His wives woke up in the morning to look for casual jobs,” he says. “Some wives would stay at home to cook for Wanyonyi, who never worked in the fields. People from other areas where he had lived — Moi’s Bridge, Kimilili, and Kongoni — often came to worship him, and they came bearing gifts.”

The first few months of Wanyonyi’s stay at Chemororoch village were quite tough because the villagers “would have none of the ‘god’ nonsense”, Mkasa explains. When, one day, villagers saw women and children worshipping the old man — their husband and father — they stormed the compound and kicked them out before razing the homestead and asking the controversial family to leave Chemororoch.

They left, only to return a few weeks later, seeking forgiveness from the community and swearing not to disturb their peace again. They have never left since.

So, is Mkasa a member of Jehovah Wanyonyi’s church?

“No!” he says, sternly. “Oh no! The only members of  Wanyonyi’s Lost Israelites Church, and the only people who believe that he is their god, are his wives, children and those ‘fools’ he had deceived earlier.”

Mkasa says there is not a single villager outside  Wanyonyi’s family who goes to his church or believes he is a god. In any case, Wanyonyi came to Chemororoch only 10 years ago and found villagers already deeply rooted in their churches and religions. Here, the main denominations are Catholic, Anglican and Seventh Day Adventists. Mkasa is a staunch SDA, Chepkoech a Catholic.

“I don’t believe that man is god,” continues Mkasa. “He is human, just like me. He is flesh and blood like me. He has sired children just like me. How can he be god?”

Wanyonyi’s church holds services on Saturdays, when his wives and children pray to their god, who is usually seated on his throne just a few metres in front of them.

The extended community here might not believe in the Wanyonyi gospel, but there is nowhere else they would rather be on Christmas Day, when the Wanyonyis’ followers and neighbours flock his home to watch in marvel as the faithful sing to their “Jehovah” the songs they have been practising all year.

But something has been amiss here for the last few days: Jehovah Wanyonyi has been missing from his throne, and while some people believe he is dead, his family insists he is alive and well. The last time Mkasa saw the man was a few weeks ago, when a sickly Wanyonyi was taken to a hospital in Cherengany before being transferred to Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret.

Nobody we talked to knows what ailed Wanyonyi, but people say he has been having a serious back problem.

OFFICIAL NAME

The next time Mkasa heard about Wanyonyi was when the local chief called him to ask for Wanyonyi’s official name.

“The chief asked me to ask Nangila — one of Wanyonyi’s wives — her husband’s official names as they appear on his national identity card. The chief said Wanyonyi was dead, and that he wanted to grant a permit to allow the transfer of the body to a mortuary,” says Mkasa.

Mkasa forwarded the official name — Michael Mumboyi — to his chief, and then, as the village elder, announced to the community that Jehovah Wanyonyi was no more.

Today, however, Chemororoch village does not know whether Wanyonyi is truly dead, because even though Mkasa announced the old man’s death, his family insists he will soon resurface to prove the rumour wrong.

“Jehovah will be here in a few days,” says Nangila, his wife. “When he returns, you can come back and take your pictures.”

There is a joke around the village that Jehovah Wanyonyi “ascended to heaven” because villagers have not seen his body, nor have they attended any vigil in honour of their departed neighbour. Most importantly, they have not been called for a burial, which is usually accompanied by a big feast in honour of the dead.

No one, however, is willing to tell this joke out loud... unless you are Mkasa, and you are as high as a kite.

***

Dead or alive? Man said the world would end in 1995... or 2002

Jehovah Wanyonyi, whose real name is Michael Mumboyi, was born in 1925 in Bungoma County, Western Kenya.

 He started the ‘Baisraeli’ sect in 1956, but it was not until 1960 that he claimed he was God and asked his followers to worship him. The church is today called ‘The Lost Israelites of Kenya”

 He is said to have 70 wives and hundreds of children and grandchildren. By the time of our visit, only six wives were present. The other wives are said to have run off to other parts of the country and Uganda.

His children, too, are scattered all over Kenya and Uganda.

 In the 1980s, Wanyonyi settled in Bungoma and was said to have thousands of followers who sold their property and livestock to support his sect, believing he was the healer of all maladies.

When they realised he was a hoax, he was kicked out, and he fled to Kimalewa Village in Mount Elgon. Here, he predicted that the world would end in 1995, then 2000, then 2002. When they discovered he was being a bit sketchy, the people of Mt Elgon evicted him and he moved to Chemororoch village.

 On July 18, 2015, Jehovah was said to have died at Cherengany Nursing Home. His family, however, denied his death and said he would return home soon.

His neighbours say his family has confided in them that he is dead and was buried in one of his elder daughter’s homes.