When President Uhuru Kenyatta turned three, his father, Jomo Kenyatta, had him enrolled in a nursery school in 1964. There were no day-care centres or kindergartens then.
Lady Northey Nursery School along State House Road was ideal. Never mind it was run by the City Council of Nairobi under Mayor Charles Rubia, the first Kenyan City Father, who had taken over from His Worship Mayor Harold Travis in 1962.
The President’s social secretary, Margaret Madoka, drove Uhuru from Caledonia to Lady Northey Nursery in her Mini Morris in the morning and picked him in the evening.
Margaret Madoka later recalled in an interview how young UK was so used to her – the future president never cried on his first day of learning ‘sha-she-shi-sho-shu!’
Lady Northey Nursery School – part of the Lady Northey Home that includes Lady Northey Children’s Dental Clinic (which caters for the very poor) was built by the East African Women’s League that also put up Pumwani Maternity Hospital in 1927.
It is named after the wife of Sir Edward Northey, who was a Lieutenant General in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps and later became Governor of Colonial Kenya for a year.
See Also:
Crowd throng Kasarani Stadium for President Uhuru’s Inauguration
Jomo Kenyatta with his family during Uhuru Kenyatta’s seventh birthday at state house in 1968.
Lady Northey (born Anna Evangeline Cloet) succumbed to cancer aged 70 in cold old 1941 England.
Other famous alumni of Lady Northey Nursery School from the first family include Nyokabi (later a 200-metre sprinter at Kenya High School) and Muhoho Kenyatta.
