Lessons youth can learn from Jomo’s life

What you need to know:

  • The lesson here is that how and where you begin your life is not important; beginning is all that you need.
  • From humble beginnings as a carpenter and a water meter reader, Jomo’s is the amazing story of how he overcame seemingly impossible odds against him.
  • In the words of Lupita Nyong’o, “no matter where you are from, your dreams are valid.’
  • Patience and suffering are still virtues today.

It has been 38 years since the death of Kenya’s founding president, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta.

Over half of Kenya’s current population was not born in 1978, when he died at the ripe old age of 86 or thereabouts.

In 1978, the mobile telephone and the world wide web had not been born, the Berlin Wall was still up, and the USSR intact.

The world has changed in unimaginable ways since then, and so has Kenya.

Today’s younger generation does not care who Jomo Kenyatta was even though he remains a central figure in the nation with Nairobi’s main street, Kenya’s biggest referral hospital, Africa’s ninth busiest airport, East Africa’s largest conference facility, two universities, among many other things, named after him and his portrait on our currency.

His son, Uhuru Kenyatta, is Kenya’s current president.

To the techno-savvy young woman strutting along Kenyatta Avenue in Nairobi in her stiletto shoes and an iPhone in her hand or the young man listening to music on his iPod at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport as he waits for his flight, the name Kenyatta must sound distant and even ancient.

However, the younger generation can find a basketful of lessons from old Jomo’s life.

NO SON OF PRIVILEGE

The Kenyatta family is now known as a dynasty, but the family patriarch was no son of privilege.

Born Kamau to Muigai wa Kung’u, young Jomo was orphaned at an early age and lived most of his childhood with his uncle, Ngengi, and medicine man grandfather, Kung’u wa Magana.

The lesson here is that how and where you begin your life is not important; beginning is all that you need.

From humble beginnings as a carpenter and a water meter reader, Jomo’s is the amazing story of how he overcame lack of pedigree, an imperial power, and other odds to become Kenya’s first president.

In the words of Lupita Nyong’o, “no matter where you are from, your dreams are valid.’

At the risk of sounding like a revisionist, I must hasten to point out that old Jomo was no cream in the human milk of virtue.

No human being is. However, there are many lessons for the youth today in Jomo Kenyatta’s life journey.

In it we find extraordinary feats achieved by an ordinary man who stayed the course.

With a chequered history, not so illustrious an education, and sins of youthfulness, Jomo navigated the labyrinth of pre-independence intricacies to oversee the coming to birth of a new nation.

Known for its penchant for instant solutions, today’s young generation can do with lessons in humility by taking a walk down memory lane in Mzee Kenyatta’s shoes.

The old lion waited through the storms of the Second World War, escaping from Russia to Britain using Europe’s old routes littered with outlaws, spending time in prison, and still came out to lead a nation.

Patience and suffering are still virtues today.

Mzee became Kenya’s president way into his 70s. Surely, a 24-year-old graduate has no compelling reason to despair in life.

Jomo’s life story confirms that age is just a number, hard work pays, and that history cannot wait for a man and woman with a vision, conviction, and focus.

And that the word “impossible” should not be in the vocabulary of a young person.

Mr Maliba is the Nairobi representative on the National Youth Council.  [email protected]. Twitter: @ArnoldMaliba.