A man has expressed his two regrets in life with one being when his mother declined a marriage proposal from a powerful minister and ended up marrying a jigger infested farmer from Gatanga in Murang’a County.
The man, Nelson Kariuki, 73, revealed that Mbiyu Koinange, who served as a minister in founding President Jomo Kenyatta's cabinet, loved his mother dearly but she had affection for someone else.
“My mother was born here and the adjacent land belongs to the Koinange family, so one day Koinange proposed to my mother but she declined because she loved my father who hailed from Gatanga.
"He had jiggers but she chose him. It torments me when I imagine that I could have been Koinange’s son if she agreed to marry him. Right now I would be stinking rich!” he told Standard Digital.
Koinange was arguably the first ever Kenyan to get a university degree and proceeded to serve as a minister of state.
The other regret, Kariuki continued, was that he wasted his fortune on women and alcohol and now he has to survive selling sugarcane in Kiambiya and Ruaka towns.
He further disclosed that he was wealthy back in 1970s and he was the first person in that village at the time to buy a bicycle. He also had a supermarket business.
“I was the first man to buy a bicycle in this village in 1965. I used the bicycle to ferry goods from Nairobi to Mucatha and will never forget the day I was thrown out from the barmaid’s house when my supermarket and butchery businesses collapsed in Mucatha.
"She packed my clothes in a bag and threw me out. I went to live in the city because of shame and many times I would eat rotten fruits in Marikiti market,” he continued.
Kariuki is a father of five and he lives in a mabati room in Kiambiya village in Ruaka, Kiambu County.
