Lena Moi: The First Lady that Kenya Forgot

Just after Moi took power in 1978, she was divorced and reduced to silence.

For the 24 years that Moi reigned as President– albeit with an iron fist – his ex-wife Lena Tungo was hardly seen in public.

Even when Moi’s children were doing church weddings, Lena was kept away and watched the ceremony on Kenya Broadcasting Corporation television like a stranger.

That was unlike the woman who loved publicity in the 1960s and 70s and would grace many an occasion – alone or with Kenyatta’s Cabinet minister and vice-president Daniel Toroitich arap Moi.

Lena’s departure from the social and political scene in mid-1974, after the collapse of her marriage, surprised many people. In 1979, months after Moi was sworn in as President following the death of Jomo Kenyatta in August 1978, Lena was officially taken through the motions of divorce, and she faded away into oblivion.

At her Eldama Ravine home, security agents constantly watched Lena, and she kept herself busy with church matters as an ardent member of the local African Inland Church (AIC).

At the AIC, the young Helena Bommet, as she was known, had met the young tall, and handsome orphan boy – Moi – who had been brought to seek shelter while attending a local school. Moi’s home was 160 kilometers away, and rather than go home, he stayed with the family of Paul Bommet, a pioneer AIC elder. At other times, Mr. Moi would stay with the family of Isaiah Chesire, and he hobnobbed with some of Chesire’s children, including former nominated MP Zipporah Kittony and former Eldoret North MP Reuben Chesire. He would also be hosted by the Australian family of Albert Barnett – a missionary who had left Australia in 1907, believing that God had called him as a missionary to Kenya and who was instrumental in the spread of the African Inland Mission in the Rift Valley.

Barnett lived among the Tugen in what is today Kabarnet before settling at Eldama Ravine. So popular was the Barnet family that they had a town named after them – Kabarnet.

It was this family which was instrumental in shaping Moi’s early life. Moi had taken off on their mission, hoping to get an education. The students would wake up at 6 am, work in the vegetable gardens and haul gallons of water from the river to the station. In the afternoon, they would sit with Barnett’s Swedish wife, Elma, to learn numbers.

The Barnetts made Moi the Sunday school teacher at an early age as they encouraged him to take a leadership role in the church. By 1942, he was the school captain of the government school, with Paul and Erik Barnett as his peers — the two missionary sons of Albert Barnett.

Paul later baptized Lena when he started working as a missionary and also helped Moi to build his first house – where he occasionally slept as he opened more schools and churches in the Rift Valley.

What we know is that Moi’s father, Kimoi arap Chebii, died in 1928 when Moi was only four years old. But there is little known about his mother, Kabon. After the death of Moi’s father, his elder brother, Tuitoek, became his guardian. Moi was one of the herdsboys from the Sacho location recommended to join the new Africa Inland Mission (AIM) School at Kabartonjo in 1934 before it was shifted to Kapsabet.

Lena, born in 1926, was also a student at the AIM School in Eldama Ravine before she joined Tenwek Girls’ Boarding School in Kericho. With her brother William Bomett and sister Dina, some of the early AIM student converts, Moi also joined their ranks.

Occasionally, the group would tour local churches, singing and preaching the Gospel – and that Moi would fall in love with Lena was expected.

Moi, who was working at Tambach (after he was recommended by education officer Moses Mudavadi, the father of one of Moi’s vice presidents, Musalia Mudavadi) started dating Lena. By this time, he was known as a teacher, then as a preacher.

A year after Moi returned from further training at Kagumo Teachers College, he married Lena in 1950 in a ceremony conducted by the Reverend Erik Barnett at the AIC mission in Eldama Ravine after he paid two heifers, one ox, and four sheep to the Bomett family. Moi’s long-time friend, Francis Cherogony, was the best man.

Moi’s devotion to religion, and he never missed Sunday church service, was startling. With the marriage, Lena abandoned her career as a teacher and immersed herself into bringing up her family, settling down with Moi at Tambach Government School, where his first two children, Jennifer and Jonathan Kipkemboi, were born in 1952 and 1953, respectively.

Those who hobnobbed with Moi in the 1950s thought he would make an excellent preacher – perhaps following the trails of his mentors – the Barnett family. But Moi liked teaching more than anything else. Things took a new twist for Lena in 1955, when her husband was appointed to the colonial Legislative Council (Legco) to replace the inefficient John ole Tameno and as a representative for the expansive Rift Valley.

By then, he had bought a Land Rover and opened a posho mill in south Baringo, and rather than settle with his new bride, and he started crisscrossing the Rift Valley as the region’s senior-most politician at the height of the emergency.

The quiet teaching life that the couple had anticipated was gone as Moi moved out of the school compound with his family for Nairobi. He was now dressed in suits and ties rather than the shorts and long socks that had been his trademark as a teacher. Early photos of the family with their first children show a remarkably handsome man – well-groomed.

“He and his family were better fed, eating a richer diet than they had ever had before,” wrote Moi’s biographer.

But Moi’s political relationship with his in-laws was not always at its best. The fallout with the Bometts appeared to have started in the 1961 election when his brother-in-law, Eric Bomett, stood against him as an independent candidate in the General Election.

“It was not personal. It was a matter of principle,” Eric would later say. Although Eric would enter Parliament as a Specially Elected Member on a Kanu ticket, it was Moi’s Kadu that carried the day, eclipsing Kanu in the region.

As Moi was on the move in pre-independence politics, Lena became a housewife. In an interview in 1967, she said it was necessary that the children were cared for by their own mothers if they were to grow up mentally and physically healthy.

“She is equally assiduous about looking after her husband, who enjoys her cooking and only eats outside the home when he has to,” veteran journalist Faraj Dumila, who conducted the interview, wrote.

Moi would also remark: “I owe her much of my success in the service of my people and my country. She has always been an encouraging factor in all aspects of my political life.”

But with his life immersed in politics and fast life, Lena and Moi fell apart, and Moi moved out to Kabarak, where he had another farm. By leaving Lena at Eldama Ravine, Moi raised his children without a mother, and whenever they had a wedding, he would make sure she was nowhere. Why? Nobody knows.

Even after her death, she was to be buried at her home in Eldama Ravine until Moi made a last-minute decision to have her buried in Kabarak – a place she had not slept.