A person is a person no matter how small: Wambui Kamiru

What you need to know:

  • Bob Collymore's wife eulogised him with the same message he shared with a group of schoolchildren in 2013.

Bob Collymore’s wife Wambui Kamiru eulogised her husband by sharing with the world the same speech he gave a group of schoolchildren in 2013.

She read out a message drawn from Dr Suess's book with the inspiring moral: "A person's a person no matter how small."

But before she read out the speech to a congregation of family, Kenyan business and political and global leaders attending the memorial service at the All Saints Cathedral on Thursday, she said “Bob had left when the applause was loudest.”

'POWER AND SUCCESSION'

She said the words had been drawn from one of Collymore’s favourite quotes spoken by Ghana's former president John Mahama who apparently once intimated to him when speaking to him of power and succession that “one must leave when the applause is loudest.”

During the eulogy, she paused to convey gratitude to a strange man she said reminded her of the kind of man that Collymore had been.

“On Tuesday as the convoy made its way to Kariokor for Bob’s cremation an elderly gentleman in a bright orange jacket stood by the side of the road, raised his right arm in the air in salute. As our convoy slowed down he shouted, “Bob we love you. You have done well. Go well Bob!” she said.

“I’d like to thank this gentleman for reminding me in the midst of my grief that Bob was a different sort of person.

“It was someone that I will probably never meet again, a Kenyan like myself who felt that his duty that morning was to stand by the side of the road and announce to the world that Bob had left a mark in his life...”

To eulogise her husband, she read out a speech by Collymore that set out to encourage the children to be version of themselves that they could be in spite of their circumstances. 

She said the story epitomized the man she had come to know as her husband for the last three years.  

However, she did not mention whether this particular message had been selected for her to convey by her husband once he had departed.

In the fable from Collymore’s speech, an elephant is determined to help some little people stuck in a roll of dust that all the other animals ignore.

Some of the animals even try to masochistically throw them around for the fun of it.

In the story, the elephant uses its ability as a big animal to help the little people after they are tossed in a field full of clovers by an eagle, and are hard to find.

The story teaches that even though you can't see or hear small people, “a person's a person, no matter how small."

In the speech, Collymore had gone on to tell the story of his upbringing, and how he had been brought up in poverty at his grandmother’s house together with other children whose parents could not take care of them.

In his narration to the children, he had said how he often woke up drenched up, after one of the kids had wet the bed that they shared.

“Growing up with the little brothers and sisters that I was not related to, expect through love….my grandmother was like the elephant that heard the noise from the small people on the speck of dust. She didn’t have much…we were poor but she reminded me that whatever little we had, we could always share it. She did this because a person is a person no matter how small,” Wambui recited Collymore’s speech.