Photo/FILE The Windsor Country and Golf Club.
By ALPHONCE SHIUNDU ashiundu@ke.nationmedia.com
Posted Saturday, February 25 2012 at 20:35
Posted Saturday, February 25 2012 at 20:35
He sat at the head of a long table, a white napkin down to his chest, to prevent his shirt from unlikely food stains – he was quite careful with his cutlery anyway.
Prof James ole Kiyiapi, the then Permanent Secretary in charge of the Environment, sat next to him. At the rest of the table were journalists and ministry officials, no more than 25 in total.
The location was the posh Windsor Golf Hotel and Country Club in Nairobi’s upmarket Ridgeways Estate.
At the head of the table was the owner of the exclusive hotel that styles itself as Africa’s best kept secret – Mr John Njoroge Michuki.
Everyone at the table had just attended a meeting on the rehabilitation of the Nairobi River at the United Nations complex in Gigiri, Nairobi.
As the smartly dressed waiters served a five-course meal, Mr Michuki shed his no-nonsense shell and adopted the hitherto unknown easy, grandfatherly, demeanour. He had tales to tell.
From the table, we could see the beautiful, well-manicured green golf course and the Victorian style houses on the perimeter.
Because the lunch took place four years ago, time may have blunted the genesis of the story-telling, but the stories he told that day are timeless.
“I began building this place in 1988 when I lost the election in Kangema. I just wanted something to keep my mind away from politics,” he said, chewing his food and occasionally lifting his head to those assembled.
“Losing the election was a blessing in disguise”. The agreement before we sat down was that it was just lunch; anything else was to come later.
With the notebooks folded, recorders and cameras switched off, the minister looked at ease.
He was at his hotel, perhaps the most powerful man at the gathering, so it was only natural for him to act according to his status.
“I had this architect friend from England. I told him I wanted a Victorian-style building,” Mr Michuki said.
The architect drew up the first house plan, but Mr Michuki declined. He rejected plan after plan after plan.
“I told him that if he did not deliver, I’d fire him. He spent the whole weekend working, and when he came to see me on Monday morning, he had the one I liked.
“The man had not slept, he had not even shaved,” Mr Michuki said.
Thought I was crazy
With the building decided, he began working on the golf course. He said he dug up the whole place.
“They looked at it and thought I had gone crazy. They wondered why I had not planted coffee all over the place like everybody else,” he said.
Meanwhile, the waiters and waitresses who were standing right behind us kept refilling our glasses with cold fruit juice. You just had to state your preference – mango, passion, orange or cocktail.
As I looked at him narrate his story, my mind kept drifting to that day in 2006 when he looked straight at the cameras with the belligerent “if you rattle a snake, you should be prepared to be bitten by it”.
Someone commented that the whole million-dollar complex was “a proper investment” and wondered why Mr Michuki had thought that politics was his playground in the first place.
The serious no-nonsense look momentarily flashed across his face and then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, melted back into the grandfatherly look.
He said that we should learn from him and invest during our youth.“You eat your youth in your old age,” he said.He looked around the table and saw young people, really younger people — he was the oldest anyway.
“The problem with you young people is that when you get a little money, you want to buy cars, go to the disco and spend it on alcohol.
“Invest when you’re still young. Mnasikia?” he asked looking at us. We nodded. Whether we’d ever take his advice would be a personal decision to be made within each of our hearts.
I was reminded of a story told to me by a colleague about another colleague. For professional reasons, they will remain anonymous.
The journalist had an interview with Mr Michuki at Windsor. The minister called him a few minutes to the appointed hour and apologised. He said he’d be late. He asked him to “grab a drink while he waited”.
Some say the fellow grabbed a bottle of beer at 10 in the morning; someone said he took wine. But when the minister arrived, he looked at the fellow and asked why he was taking alcohol in the morning.
“Only people who’ve made money drink alcohol at this hour. I had expected you to take juice or tea, not alcohol. I don’t think it would be fair if I foot the bill, even if it is in my hotel. You’ll have to pay for that.”
Though the intention of following the minister to Windsor was to get an interview, he made it clear that “all that had to be said regarding the rehabilitation of Nairobi River had been said at the conference”.
He promised to make Nairobi river, then a mass of flowing, black grimy effluent, flow with clean water. He had done it before when he introduced stringent road safety rules especially for public service vehicles.
Unlike Mr Mutula Kilonzo, the then minister for Nairobi Metropolitan Development who promised to swim in the Nairobi River in six months but has never done so, Mr Michuki did not make any grandiose statements.
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