Politicians rarely give you a window into their private lives. Onyonka didn’t plan to either but the condolence visits did it for him.
When leaders streamed into Utawala to mourn with Senator Richard Onyonka following his mother’s passing, the cameras came with them.
Photos from those visits have since made the rounds online, and Kenyans have been looking not at the politicians, but at the house behind them.
Wide rooms. Clean finishes. The kind of tiled floors that reflect light properly. Cream sofas arranged without clutter, fresh flowers on the tables, and a living room that seated Cabinet Secretaries, MPs, and party officials without anyone looking squeezed.
The space absorbed a full political delegation and still looked like a home, not a function hall.
Onyonka sat through all of it without the stiffness you sometimes see in politicians when cameras are around inside their homes. He looked like a man in his own chair which he was.
The visits themselves had that familiar Kenyan texture. Condolences in the front, conversations in the back. When that many senior figures pass through the same gate in one week, it is never purely about grief.
Outside, the compound holds up just as well. Paved driveway, maintained exterior, the kind of property that says Utawala has come a long way from what it was ten years ago.