Peter Oloo Aringo Jr, the son of one-time, Kanu-era powerful minister, Peter Oloo Aringo at home in Nakuru town. [Kipsang Joseph/Standard]
They say looks may be deceiving, well Peter Oloo Aringo may look like that ordinary man with limited means. When The Standard team got to his home, he was going about with his activities.
Aringo is the firstborn son of former Alego Member of Parliament and minister for education Peter Oloo Aringo and a Jamaican mother.
He attended the prestigious Consolata Primary School in Nairobi and St. Mary's Yala where he had begun drinking and later proceeded to the United States where he pursued a business administration course at Lona College.
While in the US, Aringo opines life was good, on the first lane. His drinking habits right back from high school in Kenya, however, grew not only as a consumer but now as a peddler which endeared him to his peers but little did he know he was on the radar of the New York Federal authorities.
“I became a dealer. I decided if I want to make more and use more, I needed to get into the business. And that’s where my downward spiral began,” Aringo says.
Being an alien and on the wrong side of the law, he was a marked man. Authorities finally pounced on him. He was arraigned and sentenced to 30 years in jail but he was too lucky to be given an option of deportation which he opted for.
As it is the norm, a deportee, he came back home empty-handed without even his travel documents, his wife and three children. “I had no money. I had nothing".
Back home his appetite for alcohol and drugs only increased but he could only afford cheap liquor which eventually caused him throat cancer.
His wife Catherine Boyane, also a reformed drug addict with whom they got married in May this year, recalls how it all began.
“The day we started noticing a swelling on his neck, we thought it was a sore throat. We never thought it would be cancer,” she said.
Throughout the interview, Aringo Jnr kept sipping tea or water as there is totally no saliva in his mouth.
The man who grew up in opulence has only a wall clock with his father's name permanently inscribed on it triggering nostalgic memories.
The couple is now quietly living at the heart of a posh estate in Nakuru but in a shanty sandwiched between high-end houses.
