Tribute to Hellen Sunkuli: pioneer tutor, gender activist

The people we celebrate as heroes and heroines are often those who captured the national imagination by making headlines, or who have worked their way up and bestrode the national landscape.

Yet our rural areas are teeming with unsung heroes and heroines — individuals who touched lives and made a difference away from the limelight, and often without any accolades.

Ms Hellen Nayianoi Sunkuli fits this billing. She died this week in her hospital bed aged 82 after a short illness.

She passed on without interrupting the daily flow of life for anyone, except those closest to her.

She went as quietly as she lived, deceptively giving the impression she did not matter.

PARENTING

Through sheer grit, the mother of famous political, government and cultural brand names in Narok County, she impacted many lives in Trans Mara and the greater Narok in the seventies and eighties.

Those who knew her may only have known her as the mother of Mr Julius Sunkuli, once a powerful Security minister and erstwhile MP and Kenya’s ambassador to China.

Or they may have known her as the mother of Mr Andrew Leteipa Sunkuli, an accomplished writer and publisher, entrepreneur and political voice of note in Narok.

Or perhaps they only knew her as the mother of Mr Charles Sunkuli, the Devolution principal secretary.

Or yet some may have known her only as the mother of another four children, each of them successful in their chosen careers.

Yes, Mama Nayianoi was all this and more. She was a force for social change and in many respects, a trailblazer in her own right.

MOI'S STUDENT

Born in the late 1930s in Uasin Gishu, her father enabled her to attend school, a first among her Maa community at the time.

Young Nayianoi endured a long separation from her parents as the final Maasai relocation got under way and her parents moved with the rest of the tribe to the Trans Mara end of the Southern Reserve.

She was the first and perhaps the only Moitanik daughter of the Iltareto age group to complete school.

At Kapsabet Intermediate School, Nayianoi was privileged to have been a pupil of Daniel Toroitich arap Moi, the future President of Kenya.

Kapsabet also introduced her to Christianity where she developed a lifelong passion for church music.

When she rejoined her parents in Kilgoris upon completing school, Nayanoi was a tall, confident, trendy and ready to roll damsel of her generation.

SKILLS

Besides soon getting married to Francis ole Sunkuli, she embarked on further education through self-training, attending courses in Ngong and at the Quaker Mission in Kaimosi.

These short programmes equipped her with knowledge and skills in cooking, knitting, Early Childhood Education, adult literacy extramural training and general community work.

These are the skills she deployed in the service of her community and in giving herself an income independent of her husband, a thing which was unheard of in those days.

Nayianoi was among the leading pioneers of nursery schooling in Trans Mara at a time when most children went directly from home to primary school without any foundational development.

She also started afternoon adult literacy classes for women of her age who were not as privileged as she to get an education.

Although she was passionate and committed to this project, two challenges dogged her throughout.

CHAIRLADY

First, the husbands of her adult students were a constant nag as they felt the programme was taking away their wives from domestic chores.

The second challenge was a high dropout rate as the women found the going tough.

But she was a stubborn workhorse and she pounded away, even at one time remaining with only one adult student, a woman who was mentally challenged!

She however recouped her excitement in the knitting and cooking classes which adult women learners enjoyed very much and rarely missed.

Of all her public roles, however, none left the most enduring mark in her community as her role as a community development officer for Narok County Council, where she doubled up as the local chair for Maendeleo ya Wanawake.

With Mama Ngina Kenyatta and Jane Kiano as her role models, Nayianoi held countless meetings with women in their villages to talk about everything from gardening, child health to more complicated women issues.

LEGACY

A fashion mama in her own right, she was impeccably dressed in these meetings, but she often had to walk long distances to them as there was largely no motorised transport or even a road to get her there.

Until her retirement, nothing would make her miss these meetings. Leaders in Narok praised Nayianoi as a selfless pioneer.

“One would have to be a heroine to do all this within a community with the barest of resources or reward and at the same time play an exemplary role as a wife and mother of children who would grow up to stamp their authority in their chosen career paths,” Narok Governor Samuel ole Tunai said.

The more reason she must be smiling down the eternal firmament at the enduring legacy she has left behind.

Mama Nayianoi will be buried on Friday at her home at Poroko outside Kilgoris town.