Nthenge: Ex-MP who has been to hell and back

Many people will remember him as a three-term former MP and one of the six founders of the first opposition party, Ford, when multiparty politics resumed in the country in 1992.

But fewer know about his personal tragedy 40 years ago when his family of 12 had 10 of them — his wife and nine children — wiped out in a day.

Thursday, November 9, 1978, was another routine day for George Nthenge and his family who lived at Muumbuni, 2km from Machakos Town. Everyday the family would drive to Nairobi and back where the couple ran a business and the children attended school.

That morning, the family had breakfast together, said a short prayer and got into the family car, a spacious Peugeot 504 station wagon estate. In all, there were 13 people in the car — the couple, their 10 children, and a niece.

COLLISION

It was an unusually foggy morning but not much of a problem for the former MP at the driver’s seat on a route he had driven on for over three decades since he owned his first car in the 1950s.

Past the Small World Country Club and just before Athi River Bridge on the Nairobi-Mombasa Highway, a long-haul lorry driving ahead at a crawling pace signalled to allow the family car to overtake.

The former MP took the cue and pressed on the accelerator. But as if from nowhere, a sand-packed lorry appeared from the opposite direction hurtling dangerously with full-lights on.

Blinded, the former MP had only a few seconds to swerve sideways into a ditch to avoid a head-on collision.

By bad coincidence, just at the same time the lorry driver swerved sideways to avoid the family car. And the worst happened as the two met head on in the ditch.

The family car had three quarter of it flattened to the ground, and the lorry’s entire front axle knocked out.

CONSCIOUS

In a flash, the former MP’s four sons and four daughters were gone. His wife succumbed as rescuers struggled to cut through the twisted metal and splintered glass to get to her.

The former MP, unconscious with broken ribs and smashed leg, was thrown foots away. Miraculously, his 18-year-old teenage son, Anthony, came out conscious with only a broken arm.

His 16-year-old daughter Victoria came out with her life on thin string and succumbed at the hospital less than two days later.

The former MP’s niece was confined to a wheelchair but she, too, died six years later from complications resulting from the accident.

Speaking to him last week, the old man recalled what went into his mind while in hospital the moment he regained full consciousness and absorbed the full impact of what had happened.

“My wife and best companion for quarter a century was gone. So were my nine children. Of the two surviving, one was nursing injuries from the accident and the other one was stranded in the US where he was studying.

"Worse, I didn’t know how he would react to the devastating news. That’s the moment I felt I was sitting in hell with the devil right next to me!”

GRATEFUL

Overwhelmed by his loss and finding no more reason to want to live, the former MP collapsed into deep sleep.

When he woke up, he recalls, he felt like God had descended and was talking to him in person.

He says: “At that point I remembered the many people I had known since my childhood but who had long died. But here I was still alive and breathing at 51 after staring at a sure death only a few hours ago.

"Where children are concerned, I remembered my best friend from our teenage days who though married for many years had never been blessed with a child. For me, God had given me 11 and though he’d taken away nine, I still had two children with me unlike my good friend who’d none.”

Suddenly, Nthenge told me, he found himself counting his blessings and thanking God.

“I also felt a great need to want to live and see what God held in future for me now that I had been to the doorstep of death but pulled back by sheer grace of God,” he said during the interview.

BURIAL

The first dilemma for the former MP while recuperating in hospital was to decide the fate of the 10 dead members of his family.

Their bodies needed be buried but here he was in a condition that couldn’t allow him to leave the hospital bed, and there was no knowing how long he would be confined there. Should the burial wait — however long it took?

“I reached a decision that since my presence wouldn’t reverse what had already happened, there was no need to extend the grief of the surviving by keeping bodies in the mortuary, besides the cost factor. I gave permission that my loved ones be buried in my absence, however painful that was.”

The next big dilemma was, remarry or not? He recalled: “Personally, I thought I shouldn’t. I was still mourning my dear wife and friend that I couldn’t immediately imagine somebody else taking her place in our bed. Again at 51, I thought I was too old to get a girl to marry.”

REMARRY

Little did he know what ideas others had for him. His father fired the first shot with a demand that he remarry without delay.

His father was a great friend of Nthenge’s late wife but couldn’t bear the pain of seeing his son and surviving teenage son living alone in misery.

“There has to be a woman to bring back much needed warmth in your house”, his father insisted, without allowing much room for argument.

But what overwhelmed the former MP all the more is when his father-in-law came to tell him to get another wife: “My daughter has left you but that is the will of God. It shouldn’t stop you from starting all over again.”

To prove he meant it, the father-in-law did the unusual: he gave Nthenge a cow as part of the would-be dowry for another wife!

RETIRE

In the meantime, and unknown to the former MP, his friends and age-mates had already began scouting for a woman for him to marry.

Eleven months after the horror crash, the former MP had another wife, 20 years younger than him. By coincidence, the two women of his love share the name Damari.

They’re still together, ageing gracefully. He says he is lucky the two families, old and new, accepted each other so well.

Though a graduate with a master’s degree, the new wife declined to look for employment and took over the family business.

The politician-husband continued doing what he knew best and was elected MP in 1983 and again in 1992 in the multiparty parliament. However, at age 70 in 1997 he voluntarily quit politics.

PERSPECTIVE

When I met him on Wednesday, the old man was cheerful, cracking jokes, and interrupting our conversation with long bursts of laugher.

He told me the biggest lesson he learnt from the tragedy 40 years ago, is to always see the bottle as half-full, not half empty.

"If you look at a half-filled bottle from the top, you say it is half-empty, but looked from below, it’s half-full. It reminds one of the old story of the man who kept whining to God that he’d no shoes only to meet another man who had shoes but no legs."

At 91, the old man says he has so much to thank God for. In the generation that went to Mangu High School in the 1940s, one needs no more than the fingers on one hand to count how many are still alive.

REWARD

The few include former Vice President Moody Awori, who was a class ahead, and former President Mwai Kibaki - who was a class behind.

In the entire group of politicians who attended the first Lancaster House talks on Kenya’s independence in 1961, only he and retired President Daniel arap Moi are still alive.

And of the six founders of the pioneer opposition party Ford, he is the only one alive. The other five — Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Martin Shikuku, Masinde Muliro, Ahmed Bamahriz, and Philip Gachoka — are long gone.

As we parted, he sang me the old hymn from the Golden Bells: “Count your blessings; count them one by one….” Clearly he is a man at peace with all below, and all above.

Happy ending: Like with the biblical Job, the former MP’s ordeal ended in a double portion of blessings. The new wife gave him four other sons who in turn brought him four daughters-in-law. He also has a grand-daughter-in-law.

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