Evangeline Muli: A life woven into the history of a nation

Who is Matthew Guy Muli? Who is Evangeline Muli? Many might get the first right, rightfully so as he was Kenya’s fourth Attorney General between 1983 and 1991, a pivotal time for the nation. Fewer people would readily recognise the second.

But despite living in the shadow of her more famous husband, Evangeline Muli is a high-achieving trailblazer; serving as the first African Chief Commissioner of the Kenya Girl Guides Association, a Kenya Airways director at a crucial time for the airline and chair of the Kenya Pipeline Board.

A mother of four, her children took after their high-achieving parents; she is the mother to Court of Appeal Judge Agnes Murgor and former Transport Principal Secretary Nduva Muli, who also served as Kenya Railways Managing Director at one time.

We meet Evangeline on the veranda of her quiet home in Nairobi, ushered in by Nduva, who leaves after we are settled.

Flanking Evangeline, and present for the whole duration of the interview, is her last born Janelynn Muli.

Her children adore and care for her, and during the interview, all make an appearance. The only one missing is her firstborn Kenneth Muli, an engineer in South Africa.

Full name Evangeline Celeste Muli, she’s better known by many in her private and professional circles by the shortened Evonne or Ivonne.

Even when she got her Member of the Burning Spear (MBS) honour from former President Uhuru Kenyatta in 2018 for her contribution to the Girl Guide Movement, it was initially made out to this shortened version of her name.

But despite these variations of her name, she prefers Evangeline.

Evangeline, who is turning 90 this year looks back at her life with pride and a feeling of fulfilment.

Guyana-born, she landed in Kenya in 1961 barely hours after wedding Matthew Guy Muli in London. The hasty departure was a last-minute change of heart by her husband who was keen on arriving home with his bride beside him.

“I have my legal certificate, I am a lawyer, and I have my marriage certificate, so how am I going to leave you here,” she remembers her husband asking.

The journey to a new life in a country in the throes of independence was anything but smooth. Evangeline remembers all traffic lights being red in their rush to get to the airport. At the airport, there was a strike, and they barely made it onto the plane.

Then the unthinkable happened in the air, their British Airways plane (Kenya Airways wasn’t born yet) suffered engine trouble en route to Nairobi and they had to land in Khartoum, Sudan.

A stop she remembers as the hottest she had ever felt in her life, coming from England.

A new engine was brought and they continued to Nairobi. 

But this was not the only hiccup in their journey. Nairobi was raining hard and this threatened to divert their flight to Johannesburg, South Africa. Luckily (ironically) as fate would have it, because the flight was delayed, the weather cleared and they landed in Nairobi as planned.

Did all these happenings make Evangeline question what lay ahead in her new home?

“I switched off,” she says, “I said let me take things as they are.”

But this flight was also an indicator of the path Kenya was taking. Aboard were Kenyan Lancaster House delegation members like Fred Mati and Fitz de Souza. They ended up becoming friends with the Mulis and their lives crossed many times in the coming years.

When the young bride landed in Nairobi, she was exhausted. She remembers they were picked up by her husband’s brother Henry Muli (then an MP and later ambassador).

Next stop? Nairobi’s South B.

The following year, Evangeline started working at the East African Community as a staff officer.She remembers being the only black woman in that office, but wasn’t fazed, coming from a country with a large population of white people.

The following years saw a lot of white people leaving the country after Kenya gained independence.

And in 1967 when then Kenya Girl Guides Chief Commissioner Standish King wanted to leave, she tapped Evangeline, whom she had been working with, to replace her. 

Over the following years and decades, Evangeline’s stature grew.

She served on the Kenya Airways board in the carrier’s infancy. This was also the time Kenya Airways acquired the tagline, ‘The Pride of Africa’, with Evangeline key behind the coining of the iconic phrase.

She looks at her time with the airline as one of her favourite memories, travelling the world and seeing Kenya Airways grow.

Then she became chairperson of the Kenya Pipeline Company board. It was in her time that the pipeline was extended from Eldoret to Kisumu.

She served as an acting chair of the board for years during Nicholas Biwott’s tenure as Energy Minister but was never confirmed to the role.

How did she get time for all these?

“I used to walk fast,” she laughs, “but now I can’t, I have a stick.”

Defining role

In all these, however, her days with the Kenya Girl Guides remain closest to her heart.She remains proud of the impact the organisation had on girls, the empowerment of women, and the values it imparted.

Her heart is full when she sees former Girl Guides excelling in various professional spheres.

“I wanted to see girls and women take a very prominent position in society. And I think it has happened because now we’re seeing more women in various executive positions,” she says.

Her contemporaries in uplifting women, she says, were the likes of Eddah Gachukia and Jane Kiano.

Her time with the Girl Guides also greatly influenced her family. Her eldest daughter, Lady Justice Agnes Murgor, followed her footsteps in the Girl Guides movement; a girl guide in her youth and later the International Commissioner for the Kenya Girl Guides Association.

“I was very proud, and when she became a judge I felt good... she deserved it and upheld the spirit of guiding,” says Evangeline.

Nduva laughs that he was also a ‘girl guide’, often doing his homework in the association’s offices as his mother attended to association affairs.

Evangeline was instrumental in having Lady Baden Powell, wife to Scout Movement Founder Lord Baden Powell, buried beside her husband in Nyeri. Lord Powell died in 1941.

“Lady Baden Powell used to come quite often to Kenya and the last time she came, she sat me down and said to me, ‘When I die, I want to be cremated. My ashes should be put in a vase and brought to Kenya for burial in my husband’s tomb.’”

When Lady Powell died in 1977, her ashes arrived in Kenya with her grandson Lord Baden Powell and his wife Lady Patience Baden Powell and were handed over to the Kenya Girl Guides Association for interment.

Evangeline says there was a spectacular last service and celebration at the All Saints Cathedral.

“All the flags of the world were at the All Saints Cathedral, everywhere guiding was,” she says, calling the moment a time of pomp and colour.

Is she still involved in the Girl Guides movement?

“No, I’m too old,” says Evangeline laughing.

In addition to the MBS, she has also been recognised by the State’s TrailBlazers’ Programme, which celebrates “women leaders who have made significant contributions to Kenya’s political and socio-economic transformation.”

And her nephew Dr James Muli (son to Henry Muli) founder of European Business School in Luxembourg has given 75 scholarships in her name. It’s an online scholarship programme provided yearly to Girl Guides.

Proud of her family

“I think my family, my children have not done badly,” says Evangeline laughing.

Her firstborn, Kenneth Muli, was a sports anchor in the early days of KTN. Evangeline says her husband could not understand the trained engineer’s choice of career. He was, however, soon off to Botswana where engineers were needed. Today he works in South Africa.

Agnes is the second born, followed by Nduva. Janelynn runs a school, MGM Academy, named after her father.

Evangeline, ever the educator, nowadays spends her days beside Janelynn, helping with the institution.

What about the dashing man who brought her across the seas a young bride?

“He was very, very amicable. He was a guy who never thought of himself as anything except a father and a husband. He allowed me the privilege of doing my work in the Kenya Girl Guides Association. The few cars that I used and broke, belonged to him. I would drive people all over,” says Evangeline of Matthew Guy Muli.

Janelynn plans to set up a scholarship in her father’s name to lead the young ones into the legal profession.

Muli, considered one of Kenya’s finest jurists, succeeded Joseph Kamere (one of Kenya’s shortest-serving AGs, 1981 to 1983) and was in turn succeeded by Amos Wako (Kenya’s longest-serving AG, 1991 to 2011).

He died in 2004 aged 75.

Their children adore Evangeline. “She is open-hearted. She has to be around people,” says Agnes who pops in during the interview. “She’s very endearing to young people, always looking for young people.”

“She calls me meddlesome,” Evangeline says of her daughter Agnes.

The Covid period, Agnes says, was difficult for her mother because she couldn’t come and go as she pleased.

“Oh my God, it was torture for me,” chimes in Evangeline, a twinkle in her eye.

Evangeline’s concern for the young quickly shows when the subject turns to the anti-government protests of the last two weeks, set off by the contentious Finance Bill 2024.

“I don’t like it. I do not like it at all. It breaks my heart to see that. We have fought so hard for something, and what is handed down to them is fire, which they shouldn’t be holding,” she says.

How does she feel about turning 90? 

“Ordinary. I just feel ordinary, and I love people and I like talking and at 90 I still have my faculties engaged so I can continue babbling,” Evangeline says modestly, but her daughter won’t let her get away with it.

“She is very honoured to be 90, we hear it all the time,” jumps in Janelynn.

“At some time in your life you just have to surrender, put your hands down, give over everything to the younger generation and say ‘on you go’. Like what you’re seeing now the younger generation are out there telling you telling us what (they) want,” says Evangeline.

Looking back at her life, would she do anything differently?

“I wouldn’t change anything. I would just want us to have a bigger stake as we go along. The women have a bigger stake in society,” she says.

Evangeline had a front-row seat to Kenyan history, mingling with names that played an important role in the Kenyan story, like the Kibakis.

Does she think the dreams of that time have been achieved?

“They have been,” she says.

“There’s some places that we could ask for more though, because some people weren’t very cooperative,” adds Evangeline.

She, however, adds that the times are more difficult for the younger generation.

She says the generation in the 60s was given jobs to fill the vacuum as the white man left, but the young today have to struggle looking for somewhere to roost.

“Most of the people you, see the children on the road there, they have degrees, they have worked and need a job.”

What advice does she have about life?

“In society, you do not get what you’re really asking for, but you take your second best hoping at some time you will achieve what you want.”