Doctor recalls good old days with the strong man of Namibia

By OBOTE AKOKO

His audacity to challenge the status quo rattled authorities even as his diplomatic disposition earned him many friends within and outside Kenya. But Samson Mijoro-Odida has no regrets about challenging acts of injustice.

While at the Moscow State University, formerly called the Second Medical Institute (Pirogov) in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), he blocked many unfair university authorities’ decisions on African students. As President of the Kenya Students Union in the USSR, Dr Mijoro ensured that his charges enjoyed their education abroad by any means necessary.

The 67-year-old says no African leader has ever shaped his philosophy like former Namibian president Sam Nujoma and his family.  

“I was privileged to be President Nujoma’s family doctor for eight years,” he says, recalling how the retired Namibian leader and his wife Kovambo Nujoma, were so humble yet determined to empower citizens of the Southern African nation.

“I was posted as a medical officer of health in Mr Nujoma’s home area of Ovamboland Province, some 800km North West of Windhoek,” he says.

Dr Mijoro visited the Namibian first family on a weekly basis to check on their health and that of President Nujoma’s mother.

 “Mr Nujoma’s late mother would insist on me eating food prepared by her daughter before I could leave her compound,” he says.

According to Dr Mijoro, the old lady insisted on queuing at the outpatient department and shunned admission to amenity (special) wards each time she visited the local district hospital. She preferred to mingle with ordinary Namibians wherever they were.

Student’s death

Born in Nyakach Kadiang’a in Kisumu County, Dr Mijoro-Odida recalls an occasion when he rubbed the Kenyan Government the wrong way by trying to scuttle plans to bury the body of a Kenyan student in Hungary.

“The incident stirred my emotions to the bone marrow!” he says, trying to wipe imaginary tears from his face.

“I was in the Kenyan embassy in Moscow reading a newspaper one morning in 1984 when I overheard the then Ambassador, Ernest Cheruiyot Lang’at tell the Consul, JD Odede that a Kenyan second-year university medical student, Phillip Muinde had died in Hungary and that the embassy had instructions from home to bury him there,” Dr Odidao says.

The medic shocked the envoy when he offered to solicit for money to have the student’s body flown to Kenya for burial.

“Ambassador Lang’at was happily surprised at my bold decision and inquired if indeed I could ferry the late Muinde’s body from Hungary to Kenya,” the doctor says.

He says that within an hour, Kenyans overwhelmly sent in enough donations to ferry the late Phillip Muinde’s body home.

When the Kenyan Government heard that students in Eastern Europe would be bringing the body home at their own expense, it sulked and swiftly dispatched the third secretary at the Russian embassy to Hungary with fresh instructions to nip the plan in the bud.

“The third secretary was told to ferry the body to Rome, Italy, then transfer it into a Kenya Airways flight that would transport it to Nairobi,” Dr Mijoro-Odida recalls triumphantly.

The students were then ordered to hand over the funeral collections to the late Muinde’s family. Dr Nyangi Muita, who had just completed his PhD represented the Kenyan students on the trip home and at the burial in Kitui.

Expulsion

Dr Odida recounts how he transformed himself from President of Kenya Students Union to the saviour of many other African students in the Soviet Union. Among this lot was Dr Paul Jimu, a Ugandan who faced expulsion before defending his PhD dissertation.

“I took him to the Ministry of Higher Education headquarters in Moscow where the expulsion order was reversed,” says  Dr Mijoro-Odida.

Dr Mijoro ensured the late Dr David Kimutai arap Koech, who had been expelled in his third year, was readmitted to Harkov Institute of Medicine.

Some of his classmates at Kamusinga school were Prof Arthur Obel, Andrew Ligale and Joshua Angatia.

While growing up, the young Mijoro-Odida faced discrimination and resolved never to allow any form of injustices to be meted out on him or anyone else under his watch. The opportunity to do so could not have presented itself better than when he was in the former Soviet Union.

At his former high school, Friends Kamusinga, he fought the bullying of form ones. Among his contemporaries at the school were the former cabinet ministers Andrew Ligale and the late Joshua Angatia. Others were Professors Phillip Mbithi, Awuor Mulimba, Otieno Malo, JB Ojwang’ and Arthur Obel.

When this writer met him at his office at Matata Hospital in Oyugis recently, he was deeply buried in books. “I am doing literature review for my research project”, he enthused.

Dr Mijoro-Odida who was Principal Medical Officer (the equivalent of District Medical Officer of Health in Kenya) of Okahao District says President Nujoma would invite him to his home every three years.

After working in Namibia and Angola, he returned to Kenya in 2008 and worked with United Nations High Commission for Refugees at the Dadaab Refugee Camp before settling at Matata Hospital two years later.

The doctor who calls himself the ‘youngest student’ at Great Lakes University of Kisumu (GLUK) is pursuing a masters degree in community health and development. He did not complete postgraduate studies in surgery in Moscow in 1985 due to lack of fees.