Over the years, Kenyan women have proved the capability to own their stories and claim their rightful positions and identity in the national fabric. The late Dr. Margaret Ogolla is one Kenyan woman who embodied this unstoppable spirit of Kenyan women.
Ogolla not only lived a boldly resilient life for herself, but she also portrayed empowered women in her marvelous books for others to see. Her wonderful novel, The River and the Source – inspired by her family matriarchs and depicting Kenya women in different times in society – won the Africa Region Commonwealth Award for Literature and has been studied as a KCSE text in our secondary schools.
Ogolla’s mission for people superseded everything. She was a paeditrician by profession, the director of Cottolengo Hospice for HIV and AIDS orphans as well as the Vice President of family life in Kenya. She invested her time and efforts in championing the empowerment of women and inclusivity for all.
It is for these reasons that in August 1995, at the fourth World Women’s Conference in Beijing, Ogolla delivered a powerful speech on women empowerment and human rights. “True justice should be for each human being, visible and invisible, young and old, disabled and able, to enjoy fully their right to life. The accidental attributes that we acquire such as colour, sex intelligence, economic circumstances, physical or mental disability should not be used as an excuse to deprive a person of life.”
While Ogolla succumbed to the inevitability of death, she’s immortalised in her books, and her intense vision for an inclusive world, passion for humanity and faith live on as the world yields in to diversity, equity, and belonging for every human being regardless of their gender, age, sexuality, ability, and economic class.
We can continue fanning the flames of Ogolla’s humanitarian activism and realise her vision for true justice by recognising the value of everyone in society, respecting their human rights regardless of how different they may be from us, and detesting injustice with our very beings.