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I received the news of Raila’s death the way I receive most sad news these days: through WhatsApp. A short message from my friend, Dr Eric Orimbo. Simple. Direct. Unmistakable. The reality of the loss, however, would take much longer to sink in—years, perhaps, to fully make sense of.
My body folds inward in disbelief as I walk through my garage, past a 2001 SAAB 9-3 whose insides I have opened up. Her blood and other body fluids are spread across the garage floor. She is waiting for me to bring her back to life—to replace her timing chain, to restore the harmonic rhythm of her heart. My relationship with her is complicated. I haven’t named her yet. I bought her on a whim.
A man I know, David, who lives along North Greensboro Road in Carrboro, North Carolina, sold her to me. We played in the same soccer league. The car had been obstinate, driving him into debt. David is also known for a late-night miracle—the David miracle. One evening during a midweek soccer game, he took a corner kick and collapsed into total darkness. A doctor who happened to be playing that night brought him back momentarily as an ambulance wove its way down Weaver Dairy Road. David survived.
Raila is dead.
Dr Orimbo sends me a Facebook link. It leads to chaotic footage from a hospital parking lot. The ambulance looks basic—unsophisticated, incapable of saving a life, let alone the life of Raila Odinga. A former prime minister. One of the most loved political figures in Kenya and across Africa. There is movement around him. Hands on his chest—medical hands, I assume. The video plays like a horror movie on repeat, slowed down. I message Orimbo back: How did Jakom get to this point?
On my way to work, I look again at the SAAB. When I paid David for it, his wife Cathy stood beside him. I teased David about passing his problems on to me. Cathy joked that she just wanted him to live a stress-free life. The SAAB is red, convertible, and has a mind of her own. I plan to open her up fully—with my spanners and wrenches. I plan to pass a catheter through the spark plug hole to the top of her piston. If she breaks me, I want it to happen after I’ve fully known her—every contour, everything.
I remember David and Cathy standing on my driveway as I handed him hundreds of dollar bills. David told me that if the doctor hadn’t been at that game, he would have died. I asked if he remembered being brought back to life. He said he only remembered leaving home for the game. Nothing after that. I was struck by the mind’s ability to protect itself from trauma.
I wondered what Raila might have thought in his final moments. If he thought of us—millions of Kenyans who looked to him for inspiration. I am heartbroken that no one will ever get to ask him.
In the early 1990s, my father told us about KANU youth wingers who had gone to our rural home with the local chief, demanding a cockerel—a random political tax. KANU youth were notorious for extortion, and local government officials were deeply embedded in political thuggery. I was too young to fully understand, but I felt pride when I learned that my paternal grandfather had refused to bend. He had threatened violence if that was what it took to protect his dignity.
I asked my father how strong my grandfather was. He told me stories of his feats, and I felt lightheaded imagining him taking on the chief. The next time I saw my grandfather during the school holidays, I looked at him differently.
Grandfather was the first person to tell me about Raila. How Raila could turn into a fly on the wall, listening to President Moi’s plans to assassinate him. That that is how he survived prison. He called him Agwambo—the mysterious one. Raila could be seen in Nairobi and Kisumu at the same time. To us, he was becoming a modern-day Luanda Magere. With Raila, there was hope of ending Moi’s regime.
In late July 2017, two weeks before the presidential election, my grandfather died. He was over a hundred years old and losing his cognitive abilities. I had hoped he would live long enough to vote for Raila one last time—for the fourth time in his life. He had voted for Raila in 1997, 2007, and 2013. One of the reasons he guarded his identity card so fiercely was so he could vote for Raila. He believed, deeply, that Raila would become president in his lifetime.
He did not.
We buried my grandfather quickly—within a week, unusually fast for a man of his stature. Relatives needed to return to their polling stations before the election. I often wonder what he would have said if he had known that Raila’s presidency would remain a mirage. That at Raila’s fifth attempt—my fourth time voting for him—he would still fall short, losing narrowly to William Ruto.
Three generations were not enough. My grandfather voted for Raila three times. My father voted five times. I voted four. On the day the results were announced, hope dissolved into despair, then despondency, then chaos and depression.
I first met Raila in person on 18 November 2017, in Washington, DC. He had come to seek diaspora support. I drove five hours from Chapel Hill, desperate for a plan—any plan. The hotel lobby was heavy with hopelessness. Raila spoke passionately, presenting evidence of electoral injustice and corruption, explaining his boycott of the repeat elections ordered after the Supreme Court annulled the August polls.
I enjoyed the speech. But what struck me was what was missing: a plan. There was no roadmap to address the brutalization and killing of Luo youth who had responded faithfully to his call to protest. The meeting ended with prayer. And no plan. Raila would later reconcile with Uhuru Kenyatta.
I met Raila again in October 2018 at Duke University, where he delivered a lecture titled The African Miracle. Through Duke Global Health Institute, we spent two days with him. We invited him to dinner— a barbecue in downtown Durham. To our surprise, he accepted.
I chose Picnic for its authentic southern barbecue. Sitting across from Raila, talking freely, felt unreal. For a young Luo like me—shaped by my parents’ struggles and my own experiences during the second liberation—this was everything. Raila was one of the architects of the end of Moi’s 24-year rule and of the progressive constitution that followed.
I explained the Carolina barbecue sauce—vinegar-based, thin, tangy. He listened. I asked him about my maternal great-grandfather, Chief Paul Opiyo, and whether it was true that Jaramogi Odinga used to visit and stay overnight. Raila smiled softly and said, “Ajuma ne en osiep Opiyo Kamanyala matek.” They were great friends.
My mother wasn’t making it up.
We talked about diaspora life. I told him about Booker T. Spicely, the Black soldier shot in Durham in 1944 by a white bus driver. Raila asked how long ago that was. Not very long ago, I said. He reflected on segregation in Kenya—white-only hotels like Kericho Tea Hotel.
It has been months since Raila died. The reality is settling slowly. The SAAB is still open in my garage. Raila will never be president—not in my grandfather’s lifetime, not in my father’s, not in mine.
I wonder now if the “African Miracle” Raila spoke of at Duke will ever come to pass.
Or if he himself was the African Miracle.
