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Kenyatta family

Kenyatta family
Jomo Kenyatta.jpg
Ethnicity Kikuyu
Current region Gatundu, Kiambu. Kenya
Place of origin Kenya
Members Jomo Kenyatta, Ngina Kenyatta, Uhuru Kenyatta

The Kenyatta family is the family of Jomo Kenyatta, the first President of Kenya and a prominent independence leader. Born into the dominant Kikuyu culture, Kenyatta became its most famous interpreter of Kikuyu traditions through his book Facing Mount Kenya.

Born Kamau Wa Ngengi at Ng'enda village, Gatundu Division, Kiambu to Muigai and Wambui, Jomo Kenyatta served as the first Prime Minister (1963–1964) and President (1964–1978) of Kenya. His date of birth, sometime in the early to mid 1890s, is unclear. In 1914, he was baptized a Christian and given the name John Peter which he changed to Johnstone. He again later changed his name to Jomo in 1938. He adopted the name of Jomo Kenyatta taking his first name from the Kikuyu word for "burning spear" and his last name from the masai word for the bead belt that he often wore.

His son Uhuru Kenyatta, who he fathered late in life, is the current and fourth President of Kenya.

In 1919, Jomo Kenyatta met and married his first wife Grace Wahu, according to Kikuyu tradition. When it became apparent that Grace was pregnant, his church elders ordered him to get married before a European magistrate, and undertake the appropriate church rites. (The civil ceremony didn't take place until November 1922.) On 20 November 1920 Kamau's first son, Peter Muigai, was born; a daughter, Margaret Kenyatta, was born in 1928. Peter became an Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs, and Margaret served as Mayor of Nairobi (1970–76) and then as Kenya's Ambassador to the United Nations (1976–86). Grace Wahu died in April 2007.

He had one son, Peter Magana Kenyatta (born on August 11, 1943), from his short marriage with Edna Clarke. He lives in London after retiring from BBC after working as a producer.

Edna, who died in 1995 at the age of 86, was Kenyatta's second wife. Mzee was an agricultural labourer in England, earning £4 a week when the two met three years before he returned home to join the nationalist struggle. Their wedding – recorded in the certificate Dhiri offered the government – took place on May 11, 1942, at the Chanctonbury registry office at Storrington in Sussex. Kenyatta left Edna in England when he returned to Kenya in 1946 and married Grace Wanjiku.

Kenyatta married his third wife, Grace Wanjiku, in 1946. She was the daughter of Senior Chief Koinange and sister to Mbiyu Koinange. She died when giving birth in 1950. Daughter Jane Wambui survived.


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