Wambui Otieno has passed away. Her health had declined over the years and she’d recently moved from being wheelchair-bound to being hospital-bound, requiring daily inputs of blood. But the infirmities of age and ill-health did not prevent her, last year, from participating in a celebration of our new Constitution.
Wambui Otieno was — and remains — an icon for our time. She was one of the many women who played active roles in the armed resistance to colonial rule, not just as fighters but, equally importantly, as information and supply chains for the fighters. Like many of those women, she paid a price for doing so, at one point being banished to and imprisoned on the island of Manda in the Lamu archipelago. She was raped by a colonial officer — and did not take it lying down (so to speak). She demanded that he be charged. He wasn’t, but he did leave Kenya ignominiously.
