The wife of former Kenya Prime Minister Raila Odinga has shared her travails during Kenya’s fight for a multi-party system of governance.
Speaking to Story Yangu, Ida Betty Odinga revealed that she was on a tour of Germany with her students from Kenya High when Raila was arrested in 1982.
Raila’s arrest
“When Raila was taken into detention and charged with treason, it was the lowest moment of my life. In fact I never knew I would be alive again,” she stated.
Following the arrest, Ida was left to tend for their young family.
“My life had to change since the head of the family was gone. I had three children, Fidel (9), Rosemary (5) and Junior. His arrest came right before Rosemary’s birthday.”
While Fidel seemed to understand the situation, the younger children kept inquiring about their father’s whereabouts.
“They kept asking, where is daddy, when is daddy coming home? You’d ask Junior ‘do you remember daddy?’ and he would have no idea what daddy looked like,” she revealed.
According to Ida’s brother-in-law Joe Ager, “she didn’t have the habit of wading in her tears or showing that her husband was not around. She went on living her life as she saw best. I think this aspect encouraged her kids.”
Police harassment
Following Raila’s arrest, she continued with her job as a teacher at Kenya High school and the government would use security officers to harass her.
“It was not an easy life since the government then was very vicious. Many are the times that they would come to our home and want to inspect the house. They would turn everything upside down and later leave me putting things back in order.
“I became allergic to policemen and the system because every time they came close to my family, it spelt trouble.”
The harassment did not end there. According to Ida, the cops would trail her as she dropped off the kids at school and on her way to work.
“Several times, I would be picked up for reasons that were completely unknown to me. Sometimes I would be locked up and released the next morning,” an emotional Ida revealed.
“When you go through such tribulations, your character and perception of people and the government changes. I changed and became the Ida you’re probably seeing today.”
Losing Fidel
In January 2015, tragedy struck after her first born son Fidel passed away at his Karen home.
“It is still painful to us” she recalled.
“It’s something that time does not heal. I remember and think of him every day. It is a terrible thing to lose a child. Mothers who have lost children will tell you the pain never goes away”.
Businesswoman
In 1992, alongside like-minded women, she founded the League of Kenyan Women Voters with the aim of ‘promoting participation of women in leadership and decision making.’
Ida went on to become one of the first Kenyan women to head a big corporate, the East Africa Spectre Limited which is the Odinga-family flagship gas cylinder-manufacturing company.
“By the time I was getting to run the company I had already been prepared to take up any challenge in life” revealed Ida.
