- The career diplomat succumbed to complications from long fought prostate cancer. He was cremated at Kariokor crematorium last Saturday.
- "My public life has never kept me from being a wife and a mother. In fact, I know I'm a wife first, then a mother and then the public life," she would say.
Image: WILFRED NYANGARESI
"If you are deciding to give me your vote, decide quickly because it is almost six and I want to go home and cook for my husband."
These were the words of nominated Senator Beth Mugo during a campaign rally at Uthiru in 1992.
She was making her political debut, vying to be Dagoretti MP.
For Beth, her role as wife to her now deceased husband Nicholas Mugo came first, ahead of being a mother and public servant.
Nicholas was a career diplomat who had served as Kenya's ambassador to Yugosalvia and France as well as in UN General Assembly and London.
He was 86 years when he succumbed to complications from long fought prostate cancer.
He was cremated at Kariokor crematorium last Saturday.
The diplomat married Beth when she was 19 years.
And for decades up to old age, the loyalty and commitment of the two to one another was never in question.
The senator declared that even into old age, her husband ranked first in her order of priority.
In mid 2019, the couple opened their Kitisuru home to mark their 61 years of marriage and also celebrate Beth when she turned 80.
During the fete, reverend Lucy Mbugua, the founder of Homecare Spiritual Fellowship told the congregation that in all her political campaign meetings, she (Beth) would insist on finishing in time so she would be home with her family.
When she rose to speak, the senator called on the congregation to read with them a poem printed on the programme booklet.
“Couples present, please join us and read to each other, meaning every word. Those in relationships or still praying for partners also read it,” the senator told the gathering.
"Sometimes, I know I have behaved stupidly, let me acknowledge, you have forgiven me happily. On such occasions, I have more understood that together, we are meant to overcome our stupidity. For indeed, you are the bone of my bone," Beth and her husband read to one another.
"My public life has never kept me from being a wife and a mother. In fact, I know I'm a wife first, then a mother and then the public life," she would say.
Beth said only tolerance and communication has sustained their marriage.
"In all my married life, I have known that no conflict or disagreement is too big to be overcome by dialogue. Nick and I have always known that dialogue is the only way to solve things," she told reporters after the service.
On what melted her heart the first time those decades past, Beth said, "He told me that loved me and that I'm the only girl that he ever loved."
At the time they were starting a family, she recalled, they both had no money to afford a honeymoon. They stayed at home after their wedding.
"In fact on the eve of the wedding, Nick was arrested because it was the times of a colonial state of emergency. It took the intervention of my dad who was a DO in Gatundu to have him released for the occasion," she said.
(Edited by Bilha Makokha)