By Njonjo Mue
Worth Noting:
- But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn….. You have come to God, the Judge of all… to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant. – Hebrews 12: 22 – 24
- One of the most memorable moments for me in the church calendar was going from door to door on Christmas Eve singing Christmas carols by candlelight. The people we sang for gave us cash donations which we would then take to church on Christmas morning to present as a birthday gift to baby Jesus whose birth we were celebrating.
[Previously in our on-going series on lawyer activist Njonjo Mue: In Episode One, we sat with Njonjo as he joined a multitude of excited Kenyans in celebrating the promulgation of the new Constitution of Kenya in August 2010. In Episode Two, Njonjo took us to a time before the beginning of his lifelong journey advocating for democracy and social justice, where we met his parents and grandparents, the rocks from which he was hewn.
In Episode Three, we were transported to Njonjo’s hometown of Thika where he enjoyed a magical childhood that laid the foundation of the man he would become. In Episode Four, Njonjo spoke of the early years when he began to hear echoes of injustice that he found impossible to ignore and that would eventually transform him from a curious child into a restless activist.
In Episode 5, Njonjo explained that despite his Alma Mater, Alliance High School having a mixed record as far as its contribution to the fortunes and misfortunes of Kenya is concerned, he was proud to have been counted among a short list of those alumni who have pushed back against dictatorship and oppression, and advocated for democracy, good governance and social justice in independent Kenya. After six years at Alliance, Njonjo joined the University of Nairobi’s Law school for his LL.B degree. In Episode Six, Njonjo took us back to 1989, a momentous year when the world was engulfed in revolutions that toppled autocratic communist rule in Eastern Europe and threatened despotic one-party dictatorships in Africa. It was also a momentous year for Njonjo as he attended an exchange programme with American students, travelled abroad for the first time, and engaged in his own personal act of resistance against empire by working in London without a work permit.
In Episode Seven, Njonjo took us back to February 1990, a time when he took part in the first of many peaceful demonstrations when he joined other university students in condemning the gruesome assassination of Foreign Minister Robert Ouko. In this Episode, Njonjo speaks about his upbringing in a Christian home, attending a Christian school and his own journey towards finding faith. ]
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But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn….. You have come to God, the Judge of all… to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant. – Hebrews 12: 22 – 24
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I was raised in a Christian home in Thika where my family faithfully attended Saint Andrew’s Anglican Church.
As children, we had great fun participating in Sunday school and other children’s activities and then, as we grew older, in taking part in youth groups and holiday camps.
The church was our second home. When we were old enough, we in the youth group even took turns in cleaning the church hall and arranging the benches on Saturdays in preparation for Sunday service.
One of the most memorable moments for me in the church calendar was going from door to door on Christmas Eve singing Christmas carols by candlelight. The people we sang for gave us cash donations which we would then take to church on Christmas morning to present as a birthday gift to baby Jesus whose birth we were celebrating.
Christmas was special in many ways. It was the only time we got new clothes and we ate chapatis at home.
My father also traditionally baked a Christmas cake for the family. We did not own a cooker or oven, but my dad would make his own makeshift oven using a jiko at the bottom and placing hot coals on the lid of the sufuria in which he baked the most delicious cake I had ever tasted.
Although my parents were faithful Christians who did their best to point their children in the right direction, it is also the case that God does not have grandchildren and we cannot inherit our parents’ faith as a matter of course. We each must find our own way to God. My parents and the fellowship at Saint Andrew’s Church had laid a good foundation but it was now up to me to find my way to faith.
After finishing primary school in Thika, my journey to faith would continue when I joined the Alliance High School where I attended Christian Union meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, initially as a strategy to stay away from the bullies in the dorm.
Alliance High School had been founded in 1926 as the first high school in Kenya to offer secondary education for African boys. It was established by the Alliance of Protestant Missions namely the Church of Scotland Mission (later known as the Presbyterian Church of East Africa or PCEA), the Church of the Province of Kenya (later the Anglican Church), the Africa Inland Church (AIC), and the Methodist Church of Kenya.
As such, the school maintained a strong Christian tradition, including the requirement that all students attend morning chapel service five mornings a week. There were also regular challenge weekends that were organized by the Christian Union. These were held twice a year and comprised a weekend of intense Christian activity starting Friday evening and ending on Sunday night.
Usually, there would be a guest singing group – I particularly liked Maranatha because it included three of the most beautiful young women I had ever seen.
Other schools would be invited and there were also illustrious guest speakers to lead in expositions of Scripture.
In the course of my six years at Alliance, I must have attended hundreds of chapel services, CU meetings and challenge weekends.
There were also a number of zealous Christian students who reached out to me to persuade me to give my life to Christ but all in vain.
I reasoned that Christianity was a good thing, but at that time of my life, I saw it as little more than an insurance policy to get me to heaven when I died. And since I was still so young, I reasoned that I could afford to wait for a few more years of fun before becoming a committed Christian. However, I continued to be a faithful churchgoer even during school holidays, more out of the force of habit than out of conviction.
If the possibility of my becoming a Christian was remote in high school, it became even more so when I joined the university.
For most freshmen joining university for the first time, the sheer freedom one suddenly got was almost dizzying. Few lecturers bothered whether one attended their lectures or not as long as one handed in one’s assignments in time, passed the continuous assessment tests and the final exams, all of which I could do easily without attending all the lectures.
What is more, I joined university during the golden age when the government not only provided accommodation in the halls of residence and food aplenty in both quantity and quality, we also got a generous living allowance popularly known as ‘boom’.
One therefore had a lot of money to enjoy plenty of drinking, dancing and debauchery, and to get up to all sorts of mischief.
My friends and I would often be found drinking in any or all of the most famous bars and nightclubs of the time such as the famous Sabina Joy, Greenview Lodge, and Modern Green Day and Night Club; and dancing at the most popular discotheques including the Carnivore, Visions, Beat House and Ainsworth.
Located on Museum Hill, a stone throw away from the Main Campus, Ainsworth (which students unofficially renamed Ain’t worth It) even had a Sunday night disco which we faithfully attended. We would drink and dance all night long, stagger to a nine o’clock lecture and then go to our rooms and sleep the rest of the day away.
All this time, there were good and well-meaning Christian friends and classmates of mine who never gave up trying to persuade me to become a Christian. These included Julie Adel, Charity Kagwi and Njeri Mwangi.
Bernard Kishoyian had been my friend since our Alliance days where, in our final year, we had served together in student government with him as the Chapel Prefect and me as the Entertainment Prefect. He had never given up trying to persuade me to see the merits of becoming a believer. And he had such faith that his efforts would soon bear fruit that it was almost laughable.
“Njonjo,” he would tell me exuding confidence with his signature boisterous laugh. “I always pray for you to give your life to Christ because when you finally do, God will use your gifts of communication, wit, charm, and humour to really advance the kingdom.”
I would always laugh off such a suggestion knowing well that it was, according to me, a mere far-fetched dream that had very little likelihood of ever coming true.
How wrong I turned out to be! For soon after we graduated from the university, the prayers of Kishoyian, Njeri, Charity, Julie, and many more going all the way back to schoolmates at Alliance, youth leaders and Sunday school teachers at Saint Andrew’s, my parents and grandparents, would finally be answered in the most unexpected way.
For alas after many years of determined resistance, I would suddenly find myself one warm Thursday evening standing on the foothills of Mount Zion, knocking at the gates of the city of the living God, and standing face to face with Jesus the mediator of a new covenant.
(To be continued…/)
