By Wambui Githiora Updike
My mother, Alice Wambui Githiora, was one of a handful of young Kenyan women trained to be teachers by the Loreto order of Catholic nuns from Ireland sent to Kenya in 1936 to open schools and train the first generation of formally educated future Kenyan girls. The girls were to gain formal schooling and become exemplars of future wives and mothers with a firm knowledge of the Catholic faith, Mathematics, Reading and Writing in their native languages, English, Home Economics, and Kiswahili, the National Language of Kenya today.
As the first cohort of women in a few schools run by different religious groups in England’s new colony, “Discovered” by the British in 1849 and made a colony in 1920, the “new women” included my mother’s three older sisters, who helped her acclimate to the very cold weather in Limuru, an area with an elevation of 7,398 feet above sea level, quite different from that of her family home in Riruta, near Nairobi, at least 2,000 feet lower. But she and all the others survived – even though the first group had run away the day after entry – unwilling to suffer so much cold! They were returned, and conditions improved, and they thrived and succeeded as students. Loreto convent Limuru is today a highly competitive National School which recently celebrated its 100th anniversary. The new women teachers joined their male counterparts as teachers, medical officers, nurses, office clerks, farmers, accountants, and in other fields as well.
Over the course of many years, my mother taught thousands of students in two schools. Many of her students became her colleagues and friends over the years. She retired in 1994, and was much celebrated by her family, present and former students and the school community.
My mother’s funeral in 2004 was attended by very many people – some from Mutuma, our village, but also from former places in which we had lived previously. Many of her former students had seen the Death Announcement of Mwalimu Alice in the papers and wanted to bid their teacher good-bye.
People from Mang’u, our village, where she had taught many children, were at the Mang’u Catholic Church, and at the family plot, where she lies buried. Many of my friends and those of my siblings, my siblings, all thirteen of us, our parent’s grandchildren, their friends, and most of our cousins living in Kenya, were there as well. My mother’s four sisters, three of them older than her, and their offspring, were all present, as were all our relatives from our bereaved father’s family.
Following the burial, a family of four came toward me. The man introduced himself, his wife and two young sons. He said he knew I was one of Mwalimu’s daughters when I read one of the selected readings earlier at the funeral mass. He had grown up in our neighborhood, but his family had moved to the Rift Valley region, many miles away, and this was his first return to Mutuma, our village. He had seen the Funeral Announcement in the papers and had spoken to his wife, who already had heard of her from him, and they had decided to attend her funeral. “She was a very good and kind teacher in her lessons, and she made her students laugh and enjoy learning, but she did more. She shaped us. She wanted us to be good, decent, and honorable.”
I thanked him and his family for mourning our mother with us. I was quiet for a while, moved by his words, recognizing the treasure he had just planted in my heart. He then said, with feeling, “I wanted my wife and children to be here today. I wanted my children to learn about a great woman, my Mwalimu from my old village.”