Some lives speak for themselves. They do not ask to be celebrated. They are lived out loud, with conviction and cost, shaped by purpose and defined by endurance.
The life of Raila Amolo Odinga is one of these. For those of us who have walked beside him, not in ceremony but in resistance, his journey is one we carry not only in memory but in bone.
I first met Raila not across a political table or in the comfort of a public rally, but in the bitter silence of Kamiti Maximum Security Prison. We were not guests there.
We were detainees held without trial by a regime that feared ideas more than it feared crime. I had already encountered his father, the late Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, years before.
Jaramogi was a towering figure in our early political life, a man who had tasted betrayal but still held fast to principle. In our conversations, he struck me as someone who had seen the arc of history bend in painful directions but still believed it could be pulled toward justice.
In Raila, I saw that same belief, hardened by experience and softened by wisdom. In prison, he did not rant. He did not complain. He carried the weight of injustice with quiet strength. We spoke in hushed tones, exchanging thoughts on what Kenya could become. He was deliberate, measured, always anchored in the hope that what we were enduring would one day make sense to a freer generation.
When he walked out of detention, he did not ask for pity or reward. He returned to the struggle. Again and again, he entered the arena, not because he enjoyed the fight, but because the fight had chosen him. I have watched Raila being cheated, detained, maligned, and misunderstood.
Cord leader Raila Odinga is assisted by his guards after police lobbed tear-gas canisters at protesters outside IEBC offices at Anniversary Towers in Nairobi on April 25,2016. FILE PHOTO | EVANS HABIL |
What I have never seen is a man tempted to surrender. His commitment has always been to something far greater than personal gain. He has remained faithful to the idea that Kenya belongs not to those who have captured the State, but to those who continue to demand that it serves its people.
In the years after our imprisonment, we worked together during the height of the second liberation movement. We helped organise protests.
We spoke out in courtrooms and gatherings. We wrote and published when publishing was an act of resistance. We watched our comrades disappear, some into exile, others into graves. The cost was high. But Raila never flinched. He had become, for many, a living symbol of the Republic’s unrealised promise.
We did not always agree. That is the nature of true comradeship. It allows room for difference without betrayal. What bound us was something deeper than strategy. It was the understanding that silence in the face of injustice was never an option.
Former Prime Minister Raila Odinga (left) and former Imenti Central MP Gitobu Imanyara at a past event.
Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group
Raila has been many things in the public eye. To me, he has always been a constant. A man who kept returning to the people, even when the people were too weary to hope. His power lies not in political theatrics, but in moral stamina. He is not driven by ambition alone. He is sustained by memory. He remembers the detainees who never came home. He speaks their names when the country would prefer to forget them. He holds this collective memory as a kind of moral inheritance.
What few see is the personal cost. The missed years with family. The endless betrayals from allies turned adversaries. The loneliness that comes with being the conscience of a nation that often prefers convenience over truth. Yet he carries these burdens without bitterness. He continues to laugh, to listen, to hope.
To walk with Raila is to walk with history. Not the history written in textbooks, but the one written in blood and courage. He has never asked to be anointed. He has never demanded sainthood. He has simply insisted on being heard. That insistence has changed the course of this country.
The 2010 Constitution, flawed as it may be in implementation, would not exist without the movement that Raila helped to sustain. The political freedoms we now take for granted were once criminal acts. He lived through that transition, not as a spectator but as one of its main architects.
A vehicle carrying Cord leader Raila Odinga drives away after police threw teargas at anti-IEBC protestors in Nairobi on May 16, 2016.
I honour him not because he has been perfect, but because he has been present. In every critical moment of this country’s democratic journey, Raila Odinga has shown up. He has stood with the forgotten. He has named the injustice. He has reminded us that this country is still in the making.
Kenya has not always been kind to its dreamers. But it owes them everything. Raila is one of those dreamers. And I am proud to have stood beside him, then and now.
