Veteran journalist Philip Ochieng, who died on April 27, 2021, at the age of 82, was a prolific writer, who put in nearly six decades of excellent work.
Ochieng did not only have a deep knowledge of the English language but was also knowledgeable in the classics.
He had a way with words, regularly churning out two immensely popular columns weekly in the Saturday Nation and the Sunday Nation. Though some readers found his writing a bit complex, accusing him of showing off his prowess in the language, he immensely enjoyed himself. And, nothing fascinated him like going for the Latin, French and other classical roots of English words.
Interestingly, only one of Ochieng’s offspring, Juliette Akinyi Ochieng, took after her father, even though her American mother broke up with him when she was an infant. The father and daughter would in 2016, some 54 years later reunite, after she came across him on the internet. She had been attracted to this Kenyan newspaper columnist some readers had complained used difficult English.
However, Ochieng’s reincarnation could be in the offing. His grandson, Philip Ochieng Otieno, who is popularly known as PO Jr, has shown some remarkable prowess in writing.
PO Jr is the son of Philip Senior’s only son, Charles, who has three sisters, Janet Akinyi, Lucie Adhiambo, and Judith Ochieng. Their mother, Jennifer Dawa, died in 2015, denying Philip Senior the pillar he needed so much in his old age. It was Jennifer Dawa, who looked after the young ones almost singlehandedly as Philip travelled, studied and worked overseas.
The American Akinyi, who is also an author, met her father and half-siblings for the first time in her life after travelling from Los Angeles, California, US, for the long-awaited family reunion.
“It’s a great feeling, but it’s hard to describe. The only person I know who could describe and understand the feeling is probably Barack Obama,” she told a TV interviewer at her father’s home in Ongata Rongai, in Kajiado County, on Nairobi’s southern outskirts.
The journalist and former US Air Force Reserve officer said then that she was excited to meet her father for the “first time in memory”, as he had not seen her since she was a baby 54 years ago.
Ochieng traversed the world in his earlier years, studying in the US, France, and then East and West Germany. He also worked in the East African capitals of Nairobi, Dar es Salaam and Kampala as a journalist and an editor, but distinguished himself by writing hard-hitting columns that many still remember so vividly.
Charles was a paraveterinary worker, who retired nearly 30 years ago, as part of the so-called “golden handshake” retrenchment of government workers and returned to the village in Awendo, Migori County, many years before his father did.
His son Philip Ochieng Otieno recently graduated from the University of Nairobi with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and Public Administration and Literature, with writing so apparently embedded in his genetic makeup.
The young man went to Sony Complex Primary School in Awendo before joining St Mary’s School, Yala, for his secondary education.
As they work on the family patriarch’s legacy projects, Philip Ochieng, whose email is pochieng186@gmail.com, Tel 0703544174, and his father, Charles Ochieng (ochiengcharles45@gmail.com, Tel 0725434492) are reaching out to, and keen to work with any institutions or individuals interested in helping to solidify the late veteran journalist’s legacy.
The journey has just begun and there is a mountain of work to sift, including some unpublished manuscripts that speak volumes about one of Kenya’s and East Africa’s finest journalists.
khagunda@gmail.com
