Early Life
Koigi's father, Wamwere, hailed from Kiambu District. However in 1915, the British colonial government declared that all land in Kenya belong to the settlers. As a result several Kikuyu people had their land taken away. Koigi's father (then aged 4) and his family were among the evicted and had to move to Rift Valley Province, an area traditionally inhabited by Maasai people. Koigi's mother Wangu, escaped a forced marriage and ended up in Rift Valley, only to be forcefully married with his father. They had nine children, Koigi being the oldest. Koigi's father worked for the colonial forest department.
Koigi was born in 1949 in Rugongo location, Bahati division, Nakuru District, Rift Valley Province. He went to Rugongo Primary School Koigi Wamwere went to Mother of Apostles seminary and later Nyeri High School. Wamwere excelled in school school and received a scholarship to Cornell University in the United States in the early 70s and while there he got interested in politics.
Read more about this topic: Koigi Wa Wamwere
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“In the early days of the world, the Almighty said to the first of our race “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread”; and since then, if we except the light and the air of heaven, no good thing has been, or can be enjoyed by us, without having first cost labour.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Virtue and vice suppose the freedom to choose between good and evil; but what can be the morals of a woman who is not even in possession of herself, who has nothing of her own, and who all her life has been trained to extricate herself from the arbitrary by ruse, from constraint by using her charms?... As long as she is subject to man’s yoke or to prejudice, as long as she receives no professional education, as long as she is deprived of her civil rights, there can be no moral law for her!”
—Flora Tristan (1803–1844)