Today, September 12th 2026 Mrs Elizabeth Wairimu Kigondu turns 74.
Mrs Kigondu is the epitome of a wife, a mother, a great sister, and a wonderfully social human being. She is also the quiet power behind the Kigondu family.
Born, bred and raised in Banana, Kiambaa, in Central Kenya, my mother is the daughter of my namesake, Simon Mucara Kagori. As per Kikuyu tradition, being the second son, I was named after her father.
My mother often tells me that I am very much like my grandfather. Apparently, he was a very social man who loved football and would transport people to the stadium to watch soccer matches. If that is where my love for people, football and gathering people together comes from, then perhaps she is right.
Mum grew up in a large family with many brothers and sisters. Perhaps that explains her strong social attachment and her lifelong ability to maintain relationships. Her mother died, and later she had a stepmother, stepbrothers and stepsisters. Through all these experiences, family remained important to her.
She attended a Catholic girls’ high school. In those days, Catholic schools were serious about discipline. The environment created by the nuns generally kept teenage girls out of trouble!
She later attended secretarial college. For many years, the old typewriter in our house in California Estate was evidence of the training she had received.
Interestingly, I am a very good typist, and I owe part of that skill to my mother. After completing Form Four, I found her old secretarial training book, taught myself proper typing and practised on a computer. So, among the many things I inherited from Mum are my typing skills!
The world’s best chapatis
My mother is an excellent cook.
And her chapatis have no rival anywhere in this world.
I make this statement without fear of contradiction: Mrs Elizabeth Kigondu makes the best chapatis in the world.
Growing up, my father was largely the disciplinarian. Children of the 1980s will remember that the saying “spare the rod and spoil the child” was taken rather literally!
The only time I clearly remember Mum attempting to discipline my brother and me, we were about nine years old. Her efforts were unsuccessful because, well, boys will be boys. We were feeling very masculine that day and somehow managed to thwart her efforts.
Unfortunately for us, the matter was subsequently referred to the higher authority when Dad returned from work.
You can imagine how that appeal went.
A tough mother
Mrs Kigondu had four children, and I was the only one delivered by emergency Caesarean section. She is a tough lady. I suspect I had a big head!
She may be short in stature, but she pushed three times. My sister Emily was even a VBAC — vaginal birth after Caesarean section. Many health systems nowadays are considerably less adventurous about VBAC.
One of my most anxious childhood memories was in 1986. I kept seeing my mother experiencing nausea and vomiting, yet my father appeared completely unconcerned.
I could not understand why Dad was so calm!
Many years later, after becoming an obstetrician and gynaecologist, I finally understood hyperemesis gravidarum — and why my father wasn’t panicking.
That pregnancy gave us our last-born sister, Rachael Nyangugi Wachira, the only one of us born at Nairobi Hospital. The rest of us were born at Aga Khan Hospital, which was the private hospital of choice for many families from our neighbourhood back then.
Coincidentally, my sister Rachael Wachira and Wachira wedding anniversary falls around Mum’s birthday.
Happy anniversary, Rachael and Wachira!
Mum gave us our concept of ushago
My understanding of ushago — upcountry — was largely shaped by my mother.
Throughout our childhood, she took us to visit relatives. We knew her brothers, sisters, cousins and extended family. Ting’ang’a, where her sister Charity Wanjiru settled, became one of the villages we particularly enjoyed visiting.
We also visited the Kiambaa home where Mum grew up many times.
Those journeys taught us something important: family is not merely about knowing people’s names. Relationships have to be maintained. You have to visit people, sit with them, eat with them, laugh with them and remain part of their lives.
Lessons I understood much later
Growing up in California Estate, Mum would sometimes send us to the grocery shop or charcoal dealer to collect things on credit.
I hated it.
As a child, I would wonder, “Why can’t she just pay?”
Only much later did I understand.
My parents were raising a family during difficult economic times. They struggled at times, but they did so without making their children feel the full weight of that struggle. Taking groceries on credit was one of the small signals of what they were quietly managing behind the scenes.
When my first salary was pickpocketed in 1994, Mum was terribly distraught.
Dad and I nevertheless managed to enjoy the World Cup match that day, and I learnt another important life lesson: never put your money in your back pocket and then enter an overcrowded Kenya Bus Service bus heading to Huruma!
Later, when I joined university, even my HELB loan helped support Mum and the household. It is worth remembering that HELB was never merely a university financing mechanism. For many Kenyan families, that money indirectly became a social support system for entire households.
They came with me everywhere
Whenever I received a posting, I took my parents along to see where their son had been sent.
When I reported to Machakos District Hospital, they came.
When I was posted to Isiolo District Hospital, they came.
I wanted them to see the places where the education and sacrifices they had invested in me were taking me.
When Dad left formal employment in the 1990s, Mum stepped up and took a secretarial position at the South African Embassy. True to her nature, she made many friends there. I believe she even had the opportunity to meet the South African president of the time, and our family attended several events hosted at the embassy.
That period taught me another lesson about Mum: when circumstances change, she adjusts and carries on.
The Queen of the Kigondu family
Those who know my mother know that she must be one of the most tolerant women who has ever lived.
To survive all these years with Mr A.G. Kigondu requires extraordinary levels of tolerance!
I am hoping that Kui Mucara Kui will similarly be blessed with great tolerance because, truth be told, we Kigondus can sometimes disturb people.
Mum may be quieter than Dad, but make no mistake: the quiet power behind the Kigondu family is Mrs Elizabeth Wairimu Kigondu.
Dad fondly calls her “the Queen”, partly because she shares a name with Queen Elizabeth.
But to us, she really is a queen.
Whatever good Emilly Kigondu, James Kigondu, Rachael Kigondu and yours truly, Simon Kigondu, have contributed to this world, Mrs Elizabeth Kigondu has played a major role in making it possible.
A mother’s love
Mum has always been there for her children and for her husband.
She married Dad in 1973, and more than five decades later they are still going strong through all the zeniths and nadirs of life.
Perhaps that is one of the secrets of a long marriage: being there.
Mum also loves our friends. Even today, she regularly asks me how particular friends are doing. Perhaps there is wisdom in that too — parents should know the people their children surround themselves with.
More recently, as my brother James has dealt with visual impairment, Mum has been his greatest supporter. If anyone wants to understand the expression “there is no greater love than a mother’s love,” they need only watch my mother supporting her son.
She also played a major role in bringing up Bilha Wairimu, my sister Emily’s daughter, while Emily worked abroad.
There is an enormous advantage in having somewhere safe where you can “deposit” your babies while pursuing life!
Emily certainly owes Mum a great deal for helping raise our Wakili.
Mum’s birthday wish — perhaps SHA is listening!
Mum’s latest complaint is about healthcare.
She remembers the outpatient benefits she enjoyed under NHIF and is not amused that they are no longer available to her in the same way. She feels sorry for me because I now have to pay out of pocket for services she previously accessed through her cover.
So perhaps SHA could give Mrs Elizabeth Kigondu a 74th birthday present and restore meaningful outpatient benefits for our senior citizens!
And I have a birthday promise of my own
Thinking about Mum’s life has made me realise something else.
I don’t think my mother has a passport.
In fact, I’m not even sure Mr A.G. Kigondu has one either!
So, in celebration of their excellent parenthood, I am making a commitment: within the coming year, these two old folks must get passports and travel somewhere outside Kenya.
They spent their lives giving us opportunities to see a bigger world.
It is time we returned the favour.
At 74, Mrs Elizabeth Wairimu Kigondu remains a wife, mother, grandmother, sister, friend, supporter, excellent cook, world champion chapati maker, keeper of family relationships and the quiet Queen of the Kigondu family.
Mum, thank you for always being there.
Thank you for the sacrifices we understood as children — and especially for those we only came to understand as adults.
Thank you for teaching us the importance of family.
Thank you for supporting Dad.
Thank you for supporting your children and grandchildren.
And thank you for giving us a home to which we can always return.
Happy 74th birthday, Mum.
May God grant you good health, happiness and many more years with us.
And yes — this year, we are getting that passport.
Happy Birthday, Mrs Elizabeth Wairimu Kigondu — our Queen.
Dr Simon Mucara Kigondu is the second born of four of Mrs Elizabeth Wairimu Kigondu