Hon. George N Mwicigi (right) Thanksgiving at Prof. Njoroge (Seated 2nd Right) Home

The concepts of Thanksgiving and Gratitude are synonymous. They are spontaneous ways of expressing a benefit we have received from an individual, a group or a wider society. It is a very natural sentiment which any normal person exhibits when a given a gift in the form of a commodity or as a supportive action in the context of an ideal that is being pursued.

As far as Kenya is concerned we celebrate Thanksgiving to publicly and respectfully recognize those individuals and organized social groups that led Kenya from colonialism to independence as well as those who undertook programs of action to ensure the development of post-independence Kenya.
 
We count my own father, Nahashon Miru Mwicigi, as one of those who fought for independence and, in the process, endured a seven-year detention by the British government, which ruled Kenya from 1895 to 1963. Ironically my father had fought for the British in their confrontation with the “Axis Powers,” namely Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, and the Emperor of Japan. He had risen to the rank of a “Sergeant” in the army, an exceptional achievement in those days when African soldiers were relegated to performance of menial tasks. He operated from Abyssinia, which is today more popularly known as “Ethiopia,” that Mussolini’s forces had occupied to further their fascist goals of subjugating the Abyssinian people and establish an empire.
 
After my father and other Africans came out of the Second World War (1939-1945), they were not given any pension, while the British people who had fought in the same war were given not only pension but also large tracts of land in various parts of Kenya. This was blatant discrimination based on race and scornful demeaning of the African war heroes such as my father.  Practically all history books written about Africa and the Second World show the indignation that African soldiers in various parts of Africa such as Nigeria and Ghana felt because of the ingratitude that the British displayed in their failure to recognize the noble sacrifice of the Africans who fought on the side of the British to overcome one of the most hideous monsters, namely Hitler, that had ever inhabited this planet. 
 
My father and others organized themselves into what is now called Mau Mau to kick the British out of Kenya. One of the prominent leaders of the movement was Dedan Kimathi who energized Kenyans in a military fight until his execution, in suspicious circumstances, by the British in 1957. The late Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, the first President of the Republic of Kenya, was one of the prominent leaders of the political arm of the Mau Mau struggle. He and others, including my father and hundreds of thousands of Kenyans were put in detention camps without trial, for the British applied what is technically called “bills of attainder,” that is, laws that allowed detention of people without trial, a concept that is at variance with what Americans have historically called “natural rights” embedded in the Fourteenth Amendment that provides for the protection of life, liberty and property of individuals.
 
During the colonial period when fathers and some mothers of various children were detained it was difficult for the detainees’ children to make much progress in education, not because of intellectual incapacity but because of economic deprivation. For instance, the British gave bursaries to children based on their political allegiance, and if you were found to be a son of a detained person there was a likelihood of you not getting a bursary. In my own case, since I needed a bursary to complete Mangu High School, where I had been admitted after my primary education, I had to suppress my last name, that is, the name of my father who was in detention. I should have called myself Raphael Njoroge wa Miru (son of Miru) but I omitted my father’s name, for its use would have deprived me of a vital resources needed for my educational advancement. That is why I have kept my name as Raphael Joseph Njoroge. However my passport has the name of my father as the middle name following the advice of Hon George Ndungu Mwicigi who also has put his father’s name (Ndungu) in the middle.
 
I have abruptly introduced the name of Hon George Ndungu Mwicigi. Let me clarify who he is in terms of kinship and in terms of what he did for me and our Miru family during the time of my father’s detention and later when I aspired to be a university graduate after my successful completion of Mangu High School.
 
At the outset, I must unequivocally state that we are celebrating our Thanksgiving as a family of Miru in honor of Hon George Ndungu Mwicigi. Our Thanksgiving is Thanksgiving for what Mwicigi did for the Miru family and also for what he did for Kenya, especially as a Member of Parliament for Kandara Constituency.  Hon Mwicigi was a Member of Parliament for seventeen years and initiated developments such as the Kandara Water Project that President Kenyatta, whose constituency bordered Mwicigi’s, envied. He was MP for Kandara from 1969 to 1980, and again from 1983 to 1988.
 
We must now address the questions of the relationship between Hon George Mwicigi and the Miru family.
 
First, I must point out that his mother is my late aunt, meaning that she is the sister of my father, both born by my grandmother Muthoni wa Meria. Her name was Laura Wanjiku daughter of Mwicigi and my father was the Nahashon Miru son of Mwicigi.
 
Second we need to note that our grandfather, Mwicigi was a Chief and the person who married his daughter Wanjiku, was Ndungu the father of George Mwicigi, who was also a Chief called Senior Chief Ndungu Kagori. It is clear then that our family on both sides had positive connection with the British who ruled Kenya. It is this positive connection that Hon Mwicigi used to help the Miru family.
 
This positive connection meant that we would use the British to our advantage. The person who crafted the benefits that would accrue to our family from this British relationship was Hon. George Mwicigi. He was an advanced student in Canada (he has a Master’s degree in Political Economy from the distinguished University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada) when I wrote to him and asked him whether he could help me go to Canada for further studies. He wrote to me a letter which I described as “an inspiration and a spur.” On my behalf he visited a distinguished Jesuit University, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Canada, and presented my Mangu High School Cambridge School Certificate credentials and I was admitted with partial scholarship, meaning that I would work for part of my fees during the three months university recess.
 
After admission to Saint Mary’s I went to Thomas Joseph Mboya, who was then a leading politician in Kenya with connections with the Massachusetts Kennedy Foundation, and he gave me a Kennedy airlift ticket to go to Canada through Hon. Mwicigi’s gallant efforts. To get out of Kenya there was a problem during the days of the British rule. One of the problems was that an emigrant (one going outside Kenya) had to sign a document that was called a “Security Bond.” The idea of the “Security Bond” was meant to ensure that the person who signed a Security Bond for you would be required to pay for the expenses of bringing you back to Kenya in case you were not able to do so either because of poverty or some other cause. I suppose the reasoning behind the “Security Bond” was to ensure that the government would never be required to pay for the expenses of bringing a person back to Kenya even in the event of death. /As the son of a Mau Mau detainee it was difficult to get some one to sign the Security Bond for me for only a limited number of people could risk signing it for an individual like, a son of a Mau Mau detainee.
 
The signature of a chief in a Security Bond was highly appreciated by the British. My grandfather Mwicigi, who was a Chief from the end of the nineteenth century to nearly two decades of the twentieth century, would have promptly signed it for me so that I would get a visa to study in Canada but fate did not allow him to be in existence when I was alive. So I had to turn to Hon Mwicigi’s assistance. From Canada, Hon Mwicigi wrote to his father, Senior Chief Ndungu Kagori, and asked him to sign my Security Bond and he also asked his father to ensure that another Chief, Ruel Mwangi, signed it as well. Both chiefs signed the SecurityBond and now when I went for my visa in Nairobi the British officials smiled and gave me the green light to seek a Canadian visa.
 
While there are many favors that Hon. Mwicigi bestowed upon me in Canada, I must mention that during my first three months university recess as a first year university undergraduate student, he found me a job in the Labor Relations Board of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The job involved summarizing the Industrial Court of Ontario’s rulings in Union-Employer disputes. There was a professor, who was President of the Board, and I really admired him, and perhaps that is why I become a professor!! If this is the case, then Hon Mwicigi is instrumental in my having become a professor.
 
I need to point out that Hon Mwicigi was not only an intermediary who ensured that the possibilities that the British connection benefited our family through my accomplishments but rather he was also very instrumental in the economic progress of my father after his detention. Indeed one of the very early advantages that my father enjoyed through the mentioned British connection that had been enjoyed by my grandfather Mwicigi and Hon. Mwicigi’s father, Senior Chief Ndungu Kagori, is that my father used to hire a lorry (truck) from Chief Ndungu Kagori and do his transport business, for which he had ample experience after coming from World War II . I remember as a boy that he had a lorry with plate numbers H4457 before his detention. After his detention the lorry was kept at a garage in Thika town, became dilapidated and grass and weeds grew around it. As a boy when I saw it,  I wept profusely, for I really enjoyed riding in the lorry sometimes going to school, and I knew now it was no longer of any use and I was helpless in trying to “revive” its former glory when it was called “Nyaguthii” or “Nyangendo.”
 
In spite of these losses after my father’s detention Senior Chief Ndungu Kagori’s family worked with a former Mau Mau detainee (my father) to ensure the progress of the Miru family. This is the power of marriage-based kinship, for if my aunt Laura Wanjiku (daughter of my grandfather Chief Mwicigi) had not been married to Senior Chief Ndungu and bring forth the distinguished offspring we call Hon. George Mwicigi, the Miru family would have had nothing to celebrate during this Thanksgiving, and in fact it is likely none of the children of Miru would have come to America.
 
Hon George Mwicigi, having given me what I described as “an inspiration and a spur,” I was able to transcend the parochial, myopic vision of Makwa people and see that there are possibilities for the future for our family. My brothers and sisters, whom I dearly love, following my vision implicitly or explicitly, have looked for new frontiers, new ways of self-expression and progress in North America, without being complacent but ever struggling to achieve greater heights. For all this progress of our family we utter a gigantic “THANK YOU” to our beloved Hon George Ndungu Mwicigi who has been in various ways played his part in making the Miru family what it is today.  Our Thanksgiving, therefore, is Thanksgiving for the altruism of Hon Mwicigi who, guided by that Supreme Reality we call Providence, has in a measure made the Miru family what it is.
 
Long Live Hon George Mwicigi, B.A.; Diploma in Social Leadership; M.A. in Political Economy; Member of Parliament for Kandara for nearly two decades; a former Assistant Minister of Agriculture, and the darling of the Miru Family.