Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2009 02:17:51 -0800 [02/09/2009 04:17:51 AM CST]
From: Leo Odera Omolo
Subject: Fw: TRIBUTE TO PAMELA MBOYA
Part(s): 2 MAGAGA TRIBUTE TO PAMELA MBOYA 050209 (3).doc [application/msword] 34 KB

— On Sat, 2/7/09, magaga alot wrote
From: magaga alot
Subject: TRIBUTE TO PAMELA MBOYA
Date: Saturday, February 7, 2009, 9:42 AM

As discussed, please find attached Tribute to Pamela Mboya for publication.

Magaga

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PAMELA MBOYA – a Tribute

By Magaga Alot

Pamela Arwa Mboya captured the Kenyan imagination in the early sixties – and remained inscribed there forever thereafter.

That was the time when the photographs of her wedding event were splashed on the front pages of the newspapers and the phrase, “Wedding of the Year” entered the Kenyan lingo for the first time.

The wedding was the enactment of a fairy tale romance, complete with a meeting of stars scenario that, with hindsight, presaged a tragic, if also, classic denouement.

The man she had married, Tom Mboya, was charming, debonair, and suave. He was also the most articulate and electrifying political personality of that moment. He was young, gifted and black, as the craze of a later time would soon have it.

With only a practiced modesty would therefore the usually irreverent gossip columnists of the time proclaim that the wedding had marked the resignation from the Bachelors Club of one of its most eligible members. The phrase “most eligible bachelor” also had its debut into the Kenyan vocabulary.

Pamela herself was living poetry itself. Young, outgoing and pleasant spirited throughout from the image she projected in those pictures of her wedding. From that wedding moment, many Kenyan mothers would name their girl babies Pamela.

Many composers penned “Pamela” songs. Only a few of them needed declare that she was the inspiration behind the compositions. She was, after all, the one and only Pamela. Commanding presence, composed, elegant and, well, prim and youthful to the end.

As fate would have it , Pamela never made it to First Lady but for generations after the wedding event and, much too soon after, when her husband was assassinated, she remained in their hearts the First Role Model for many Kenyan girls and women.

Like Kennedy’s widow, she was the heart of Kenya’s own Camelot. When I heard of her passing away, my first reaction was to remark to myself that, at least, she had lived on to witness the entry of Obama and his bouncing young family into the Whitehouse.

I cherish the privilege of having known Pamela for a long time, before and when we worked together at the Office of the United Nations Development Programme in Nairobi in the seventies and through her later appointment as Ambassador to the UN Habitat.

There is much that I would like to recall and relate about Pamela during this time. However, for the sake of this brief tribute, let me state that to us at the United Nations she became the picture of majesty and a matriarchy .

As the foul stench of tribalism, corruption and other indulgences of betrayal of our independence struggle swirled around our national life, she stood out as a pillar of rectitude.

She encouraged us to always demonstrate our sense of high professionalism and integrity, insisting we must never give our foreign counterparts in that UN office any cause to look us or our country down.

We should always demonstrate our sense and spirit of national unity, devoid of tribal or racial sectionalism. That all this should also show in the representative nature of the UNDP development intervention and coverage of all parts of Kenya, with emphasis on the arid areas and on the marginalized communities.

She was the highest ranking Kenyan in the UN Office and all of us Kenyans, from all tribes and races that served under her supervision were ever rejoiced in the appreciation of her distinguished presence and stern protection. We were always motivated never to let down “PMb”, as we all fondly and reverentially referred to Pamela.

Pamela had launched her public career in social work, specifically in the area of children’s development; and in political work as companion to one of the most celebrated politicians in this country’s history.

She proceeded to international development work and to the distinguished diplomatic service for her country. She did so much for so many people of all extraction, class or station in life, finally in the twilight days of her life, graceful bowing out of the scene with focus on the care for the aged.

Pamela was kind and compassionate to an extent very few people I have known would ever manage. She was able to touch so many people with her generosity, not because she was so rich but just because she was so kind and a loving mother to all her children and to all the children of Kenya.

Pamela has left behind a duo legacy. She bore her pain and loss with great dignity and resilience; and she endured to the end in her faith and love for her country and people of Kenya with great joy.

If she should ever find a place in the Kenyan folklore, she would be serenaded as the queen of compassion. And should she, in that however distant horizon of time, enter the realms of Kenyan mythology, she will be adored as the goddess of fortitude and forbearance.

Now we must accept that for a long time to come there will not be another like Pamela Mboya. PMb. Nyowila. May the good Lord rest her soul in Eternal Peace.

-OoO-