The day a teenage Raila was caught in a nuclear war standoff

CORD leader Raila Odinga and his security were teargased outside the Anniversary towers, Nairobi, on April 25, 2016. [File, Standard]

The world was nervous as itchy fingers in Kyiv and Moscow dangerously danced around the key to mass deaths and doomsday. Russia has menacingly told the world that any weapon fired from a European country towards it will be a declaration of war and could end with the damnation of the world.

The last time the world was this close to nuclear war was at the height of the Cold War in 1962. Then, the two superpowers, America and Russia were squabbling over the presence of some nuclear weapons in Cuba.

Earlier, America had unsuccessfully tried to topple Cuban President Fidel Castro, who had, in turn, sought help from Russia. Moscow had supplied him with nuclear weapons and America was now demanding that they be removed. Cuba was nudging Russia to fire nuclear weapons and teach America a lesson.

In the ensuing game of brinkmanship, America declared a blockade on Cuba and ordered all US troops around the world to be on the lookout for ships that could be shipping weapons to Cuba.

This blockade had some unintended consequences for a teenage Kenyan, Raila Odinga, who was on his way to Germany to further his education. At the time, he was aboard a 200,000-tonne cargo ship, Stubbenkammer, one of the four passengers.

These happenings are captured in the autobiography, Raila Odinga: An Enigma in Kenyan Politics. When US President John F Kennedy announced on BBC on 28 October 1962 that American troops had been placed on alert, Raila’s ship was sailing towards Cyprus en route to Malta. Immediately after the captain of Stubbenkammer noticed that he was being trailed by an American warship of the US Seventh Fleet in the Mediterranean. The warship demanded to know the nature of the cargo and the people on board, and even after the passengers and crew were taken to the signal room, the cargo ship was trailed all night with the big guns trained on its defenseless body and occupants.

Although the journey ended well for Raila, who had already been baptised by Sea Needle to confuse the spirits of the Bermuda triangle, famous for capsizing ships, the experience spoiled his Damascus moment. Before the episode, the opposition chief had just visited Syria and retraced Saul’s biblical journey

Sixty years after visiting Syria, the country will have to live without this enigma, the people’s president who rested in India and has since united the world in grief.