Word: mboya
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...political start. He took a free, three-year public-health course in Nairobi to qualify as a sanitation inspector with the city government, and began slipping off to hear the fiery political speeches of Jomo ("Burning Spear") Kenyatta, the famed Kikuyu leader. As a city official, Tom Mboya noted bitterly, his job paid $30 a month for work that brought white inspectors $140, and the whites drove official cars and wore street suits, while Tom was expected to go about his duties on a bicycle and dressed in uniform...
...pleased when one day a white woman walked into the health-office laboratory to have a bottle of milk examined. "Is nobody here?" she asked of Tom, who was alone in the lab. "Madam, something is wrong with your eyes," replied Mboya. Stomping out, the woman huffed: "I must have my work done by Europeans. This boy is very rude...
From then on, say his former official superiors, Mboya had little time for his job. Instead of going out on inspections, he held court in his office, taking up and then taking over the Africans' municipal union. Jomo Kenyatta's scowling photo hung in the most conspicuous place on Tom Mboya's office wall...
...marauding Mau Mau gangs began darting out of the Aberdare hills to slaughter white farmers and hack their cattle to death, and the government declared a national emergency. It is generally agreed that Mboya played no part in the savage three-year revolt. But he had been an active member of Kenyatta's Kenya African Union...
Province, Tom Mboya volunteered to help out, and Kenyatta's successor as K.A.U. president, Walter Odede, recognizing a talented propagandist, made him public-relations officer of the party. Odede, in turn, was locked up in March 1953, and Mboya became acting treasurer, despite an order from Kenyatta sent through clandestine channels: "He is a very young man and I've only met him once, so do not confirm the appointment...