Kenya’s former Prime Minister is campaigning for the Africa Union Commission Chairmanship. In the second treatise of this weekly profile, we look at some of Raila’s reading habits while in exile in the late 80s and early 1990s that have made him the man he is. In his book Flames of Freedom, Raila narrates that as at the time, there were about 200 students in the German School where Raila undertook his college studies upon being politically exiled from Kenya. The Herder Institute student body was divided into classes of 20. Once Raila and other international students were more fluent in German, they also studied German literature and European history, reading such great masters as Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe and Bertolt Brecht.
Earlier on while still in Uganda as a refugee on transit to where he would ultimately take political refuge, The United Nations High Commission for Refugees Offices in Geneva, Switzerland asked Raila where he would like to go for exile, and he gave them several options—Germany, Norway, the UK and the USA in that order. The applications were made and Raila sat out the wait for responses, as usual making full use of the library of his host, Somalian Ahmed Said Farrah, which was well-stocked.
In the early 90’s in one of his international travels, Kenya’s Attorney General Amos Wako arrived in London on a tour and the authorities raised with him the matter of Raila’s status in Kenya. Eventually, it was agreed that Raila would in due course get a one-way travel document home, with assurances that nothing would happen to him after his return. It was not clear at that point how long Raila would stay in Norway. He spent a lot of time reading in the excellent NORAD library, which received newspapers from Kenya, even if a day late.
Raila’s first few months in Magdeburg Otto-von-Guericke University to study Mechanical Engineering were challenging but comfortable and pleasant. They allowed him to get to know German people better, their psyche, their culture and their history, and he soon found himself integrated into German society. All lectures and seminars were in German but by now he was fluent, having passed all his German language exams with distinction and having studied German classical literature. Meanwhile, he was studying hard and continued to find learning very exciting.
“We would often go to the library of the University of Cairo,” – Raila Amollo Odinga says of his brief stay in Egypt in 1962 on transit for further studies in Germany. “Our ship had a library and we students often went there,” – Raila says of his ship trip to Germany for Studies.
About six months after his first real friendship with a real girlfriend faded in Germany, Raila was at a local carnival when he met Margita, a teacher at a school in Arendsee, a town north-west of Magdeburg in Germany. They became friendly and she used to come to see Raila in Magdeburg, Germany, while he also visited her in Arendsee, a pretty holiday resort on the shores of an island sea. Raila stayed with her several times and would take his books to study while she was working.
Earlier on, one day, Prof. Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o, a Kenyan politician came with Joe Ager to Mukhisa Kituyi’s house, both Kenyan politicians too and Raila’s friends, where they found Raila and they discussed what had happened around the mid 1980’s when the Moi regime was repressing all forms of dissent. This was in the early 90’s. It was clear that the situation was becoming grave and the four concluded that Raila’s only option was to leave the county. They talked about how Kamau Kuria, a Kenyan lawyer, had escaped via the US embassy just over a year earlier and decided that they could try something similar. They went off and spent the next three days planning how to do it, while Raila stayed at Kituyi’s house, reading books from his library and playing with the children.
The Writer is the Author of “The Relationship Between Books and Power”, a book on the reading habits of world’s powerful leaders and currently serves as the President of Milestones Consultancy
