In honour of Umardin Karimbux, all businesses belonging to Asians and Europeans in Nakuru were closed on 19th March 1945,
The death of the young man was felt across the whole country. He had died two days earlier on 17th March 1945 aged only 37.
The young man had never been to school. The schools back then only catered for European kids. However, his father, Ibrahim Karimbux had taken on the task of homeschooling him.
One of the greatest achievements of the young man was the construction of the Odeon Cinema in Nakuru. Odeon opened in 1929. The short road the joins the highway to Kenyatta Lane outside Odeon Cinema is named after him. The man is none other than Umardin Karimbux, son to Ibrahim Karimbux. He build the theatre when he was only 21 years old.
Odeon Cinema had the vision of serving people of all races. It was built as a revolt against the White people who only had theatres that served their own.
Umardin is also credited for growing the family business. Imagine if he hadn’t died young? At his death, his son Mohammed was 13 years old.
Although born in London, Michael Blundell who came to Kenya in 1925 was a core pillar in Nakuru through the 1940s to the 1970s.
Michael Blundell first worked as a farmhand in Solai where he later bought land and set his own farm. As a farmer, he was quite successful later serving as a Kenyan Minister for Agriculture and even wrote two books about wildflowers.
In 1948, Michael Blundell was elected to the Legco to represent sent Rift Valley. He was again re-elected in 1952 unopposed. It was in 1955 that he was first appointed as minister for Agriculture but was also reappointed in 1961 serving until 1962. He resigned from politics in 1962 and did not vie for the 1963 elections.
During his time as a politician and even after, Michael Blundell’s opinion in political matters was always highly valued. Although he entered politics with the sole intention of “<em>protecting white highlands and white privilege</em>” in Kenya, he was among the first to accept and accommodate African politicians. He was very instrumental in crafting the Lancaster constitution and brokering a deal between Kenyatta and the British.
After his resignation from politics, Sir Michael Blundell who was knighted by the British Government for his service to the queen became the Chairman of the Egerton Agricultural College. This was the predecessor to Egerton University and he served until 1972.
From 1951, Blundell was the chairman of the newly formed Nakuru Players Theater. He was not new in the entertainment scenes having owned the Electrical Theater (later renamed Eros Cinema) in Nakuru town. The theatre would not admit anyone else but white people leading to the founding of the Odeon Cinema by Umardin Karimbux.
In his active years, Blundell held many leadership and influential positions. In 1938, he was elected to the Coffee Board of Kenya. In 1949, he was appointed to the Pyrethrum Board of Kenya taking over the chairmanship the following year.
In 1964, he was appointed the chairman of the East African Breweries and shortly after the Uganda Breweries. He also found time to serve as the chairman of the Nairobi Hospital.
Apart from his two books on wildflowers, Michael Blundell in 1994 published his memoir titled “A Love Affair with the Sun.” There is also an autobiography published in 1964, “So Rough a Wind.”
Michael Blundell died of kidney failure in 1993 at his Nairobi home where he had settled after selling his Solai home. He’s survived by a daughter, Sussie.
Hon. Mark Mwithaga was the MP for Nakuru town at different times from 1966 to 1979.
Born in 1937, Mwithaga first came to Nakuru in 1952 as a barefooted young boy. The bus he rode in dropped him in Subukia with former President Mwai Kibaki as the conductor.
He got a job in a union that represented labourers working in British owned farms and because he could write and speak English, they gave him the post of the union secretary.
The young Mark would spend his days visiting white-owned farms all over Rift Valley and writing letters to the then leader of trade union in Kenya, Tom Mboya. They had a relationship that lasted way after Kenya became independent.
On 26th October 1969, Mark Mwithaga was awarded the “Black Power Law Award” for his push to “grant African Citizenship to her dispossessed sons and daughters in the United States and the Caribbean”
The late MP was also instrumental in brokering a truce between the founding president Mzee Jomo Kenyatta and the Maumau remnants who had felt betrayed by Kenyatta.
Away from politics, Mwithaga founded the Nakuru Transport Cooperative Society (NATCO). Founded in 1983, this was the first transport Sacco in Nakuru. The initial capital of Kshs. 5 million was Mwithaga’s own money.
Mark Mwithaga was a staunch Catholic and passionate pianist who never missed mass at Christ the King Catholic Church. He wedded his wife at Holy Cross Catholic Church in the 1970s with former President Mwai Kibaki as the best man.
Mark Mwithaga was to face jail twice in his lifetime. For his agitation for the rights of black workers, he was detained in Marsabit by the colonialists. It was here that his second-born son was born and he named him Marsabit Mwithaga. At independence, Mwithaga had grown close to the residents and they were ready to have him represent them in parliament. He, however, refused and opted to return home and represent in Nakuru.
The second time he was jailed was in 1975 on trumped-up charges of assaulting his wife. He was convicted just a day to a by-election occasioned by a successful petition by Amos Kimemia who had lost in the 1974 elections. Mwithaga still won the election but since he could not take up post another by-election was held.
Rather than elect Kimemia whom they blamed for the woes facing Mwithaga, the electorate elected Willy Komen as their MP.
The former MP made history when he was elected as MP while serving a jail term. During President Jomo Kenyatta’s time, he also briefly served as an Assistant Minister between 1979 and 1983.
He died on 1st August 2016.
Born in 1936, Dhanji Parmar was best known in Nakuru as a philanthropist who went out of his way to help those in genuine need.
Over the years, he touched hundreds of lives especially in Nakuru where he lived all his life. Some of the greatest acts of humanity he engaged in was helping the Indians expelled by Ugandan president Idi Amin and hundreds of 2007/2008 post-election violence victims who sought refuge in Nakuru. For his charitable works, he was awarded by Kenya’s second president Daniel arap Moi with a Head of State Commendation (HSC) in 1995.
Dhanji Lilandahar Parmar was a patriot who not loved the people he lived with, but also his country. For fifty years since 1968, Dhanji never missed a single National celebration. He was so always a welcome state guest since the time of Kenya’s founding president, Mzee Kenyatta.
Dhanji’s relationship with the leadership of Kenya began in 1968. One day in that year, Mzee Kenyatta who was at Nakuru Statehouse sent for Dhanji. Dhanji aged 32, was then working as a tailor at his father’s shop along Nakuru’s Kenyatta Avenue. He had joined his father in the trade thirteen years earlier in 1955 aged 19.
At the Nakuru Statehouse, Kenyatta had a little request to the young tailor. He wanted a leather jacket specifically from the kudu skin. In a weeks time, Dhanji was able to deliver the jacket.
Kenyatta liked the jacket that Dhanji made for him. Every weekend he would wear one of those “made by Dhanji” jackets and be always spoke highly of him. The Rift valley PC Isaiah Mathenge and Mbiyu Koinange among others in Kenyatta circle also placed their orders with Dhanji. And that was the beginning of his journey to stardom although be remained humble all his life. Later, one of President Moi’s daughters would also become his client.
Dhanji lost his life from a heart attack in August 2018 aged 82. His remains were cremated at the Nakuru Hindu Crematorium on Thursday, 26th August 2018.
https://youtu.be/7Hb7VY02kOE
Before his death, Dhanji had requested that his corneas should be harvested upon his death and donated to needy people. Doctors from the Lions Sight First Hospital harvested the pair of corneas which were given to patients at the hospital.
In his honour, one of the streets off Oginga Odinga street in Nakuru is named after him.
The deliverance church as we know it today is synonymous with Bishop Mark Kariuki. The Nakuru born bishop has been the Deliverance Church overseer since the year 2009 when be took over from Bishop William Tuimising.
Before taking over as the General Overseer, Bishop Mark Kariuki was the Chairman of the Deliverance Church Council (DCC). The DCC is a governing council formed during the Deliverance Church National Pastors’ Conference at St. Mary’s Pastoral Centre, Nakuru. This was in 1991, the same year that the Deliverance Church, Nakuru bought their current piece of land in Freehold.
Bishop Mark Kubai Kariuki was a teacher before he resigned to found the Nakuru’s Deliverance church. Born in Elburgon, he attended Michinda Primary and Koelel High School before proceeding to Asumbi Teachers Training college. It was in Asumbi that he got saved and got baptized in 1973.
In Mombasa where he was initially posted as a teacher, Mark met and married Joyce Wangui in 1978. The wedding was held at the Kenya Polytechnic and the couple was in the ensuing years blessed with three children.
In 1979, Mark and his family moved back to Nakuru. Initially, they used to worship at the Assemblies of God Church (AGC) under Pastor Harun Lihanda.
In 1983, Mark Kariuki resigned from his teaching post. He was by then a Deputy Headteacher at Kenyatta Primary school. In October the same year, he started Nakuru’s Deliverance Church. Initially, he had only six people in his congregation and they used to worship at the Old Town Hall.
As everyone who knows him will tell you, Pastor Mark is a charismatic, self-driven preacher. His church grew in leaps and bounds. At some point, the Deliverance Church Nakuru was recognised as the fastest-growing church in Kenya.
Pastor Kariuki was and still is a vehement preacher. Doing crusades and visiting secondary schools and colleges in Nakuru, he won many followers to his church. In 1987 after the Reinhard Bonke crusade in Nakuru, the membership almost doubled and he was forced to have three Sunday services.
In 1991, the church acquired its own piece of land in Freehold adjacent to the AGC church where he used to worship. By then, the church had a membership of over 2000.
Pastor Mark was also responsible for the growth of the Deliverance Church in most of central Rift Valley. All of this can be attributed to his leadership qualities.
Pastor Mark is the Chairman of the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya (EAK) and is quite outspoken in current affairs affecting the country.
In May 2013, Mark married his second wife in a grand wedding held at Kasarani. His first wife had died in November 2007 and six years later, he married his second wife Joyce Wacera. Theirs was the last wedding featured in Samantha’s Bridal Show. It had an attendance of over 6000 and lasted seven hours. They honeymooned in Tanzania.
Stephen Chirchir is a Nakuru based painter. He has been painting professionally all his adult life and ever since he was in school.
Stephen Chirchir is also an Art teacher who helps young people with an interest in painting to discover and empower themselves. He has his art studio at knls Nakuru Library where he mentors young people how to draw and paint.
https://youtu.be/HK0gShi5xvQ
With two medals from the Olympics, three from the Commonwealth Games and two from the All African Games, Philip Waruinge might as well be Kenya’s best pugilists of all time.
His most outstanding fight was in the 1968 Olympics where he won a Bronze medal. All who were watching the match felt he was unfairly denied the win and made their views felt by protesting and cheering him wildly. The judges, who could however not overturn their judgment, were forced to give him the Val Baker Trophy. Philip Waruinge is the only African to have won the trophy.
Although born in Murang’a in 1945, it was in Nakuru that Waruinge grew up and started his boxing career. He attended St. Paul’s primary school before joining St. Theresa Secondary in 1960.
As a student, Waruinge loved and excelled in soccer. However, he was selected to join boxing and joined the Nakuru Amateur Boxing Club in the same year, 1960.
His boxing career grew rapidly. In 1962 at the age of 17, be was among those who represented Kenya at the All African Games in Cairo, Egypt. He didn’t win a medal then but later that year, he won bronze at the Commonwealth Games.
He won his first Gold at the All African Games that were held in Congo in 1965 followed by the second one at the Commonwealth Games of 1966.
Philip Waruinge had an illustrious career as an amateur boxer up to 1972 when he quit amateur to join professional boxing.
Back then, Kenya did not have professional boxing then and Waruinge moved to Osaka, Japan where be took the adopted name, Waruinge Nakayama.
On 27th July 1973, Waruinge debuted in professional boxing. Between then and 1978, he took part in 25 bouts winning 14, losing 10 and drawing in 1. In 1978, he was the Japan National champion. After losing in 1979, Waruinge retired from boxing to become a coach and engage in business.
Waruinge had a fairly successful life as a businessman in Japan. Unfortunately, he was deported back to Kenya in 2007 for failing to renew his visa. He left behind all his wealth and lives a life of near squalor back in Nakuru.
Carl Flash Tundo is a Nakuru based rally driver whose father, Frank Tundo was also a rally driver.
His first race was the Safari Rally in 1995 when he was 22 years old. His sister Natasha Tundo has also been a rally driver since 2015.
To date, Carl Tundo has taken part in 90 races and emerged position one in 29 of those. His first win was in 2004 driving a Subaru Imprezza. His co-driver was Jessop Tim. He is the only Kenyan to have won the Intercontinental Rally Challenge (IRC), in 2009.
Apart from motor racing and wheat farming, Carl is also a businessman. He has been the general manager at Lesiolo Grain Handlers since 2001 and the Origination Manager at Cargill from 2014.
Carl was born in Maralal to a wheat-growing farmer, Frank Tundo who is also an accomplished rally driver. It was in Maralal that Carl grew his passion for racing. His sister Natasha Tundo is also a rally driver.
Like the legendary Shekhar Mehta, Carl has won the Safari Rally five times.
Kinuthia Mbugua was the first Governor for Nakuru County. He served between 2013 to 2017 when Lee Kinyanjui took over. After his tenure as Nakuru Governor, he was appointed by President Uhuru Kenyatta as Statehouse comptroller.
Kinuthia Mbugua who has a degree from the University in Nairobi started his career as a DO in Marakwet before being posted to Molo.
Between 1981 to 1986, Kinuthia Mbugua was serving as the Chief Instructor at Administration Police Training Camp. He was later to serve as the APTC commandant from 1986.
In 1992, Kinuthia Mbugua served as the Deputy Provincial Commissioner in Western Kenya but was deployed to Nakuru as a DC until 1997. For the next two years, he served as Marugua DC up to September 1999. This is when he was posted to the Ministry of Natural Resources as a senior Deputy Secretary.
In 2003, Kinuthia Mbugua was appointed to serve as the Administration Police Commandant. He was to hold the position up to 2012 when he resigned to vie as the Nakuru Governor.