Kambui: Where Mama Lucy Kibaki moulded Senator Beth Mugo

 The late Mama Lucy and (right) Nominated senator Beth Mugo

Kambui Girls High School was once a teachers’ training college in Kambui, Githunguri, Kiambu County where it was established by Scottish missionaries in 1903 to give Africans formal education so that they could spread Christianity. Children were being taught in the morning, adults in the evening.

In 1914, the college started admitting girls and young women. It grew into a teachers’ training college and where the late former First Lady Lucy Kibaki taught P1 teachers. She had been transferred there  as a tutor in the late 1950s. She rose to be a principal and helped in moulding future teachers like nominated Senator Beth Mugo (1956-1957) and Nakuru County Woman Representative Njoki Mbugua. 

Mama Lucy quit in 1963, a year after she fell in love and got married to the man who would be Kenya’s third president. The college was turned into a girl’s boarding secondary school in 1966.

Notable alumni include Nyeri County Women Rep, Priscilla Nyokabi, prominent family lawyer Judy Thongori and country musician Konkara Mwaniki.

Journalist Catherine Nasimiyu and MP Isaac Mwaura’s wife Mukami Mwaura, also donned the school’s white blouses and light-gray skirts and sweaters.

Here Ciru Mwaniki, the lead consultant at Oraro and Company Advocates and Wanja Mworia, a TV and film producer, “soared on wings like eagles.”

CORRECTION: Macharia of Tusker FC is not— as indicated here last week — an alumnus of Chania High, but as we have now been reliably informed by John Onguso, went to Gituru Secondary School in Murang’a.

Onguso is the Principal of Gituru Secondary School.