Celebrated lawyer and judge Lee Gacuiga Muthoga has become the latest legal practitioner to release his memoir, Audacity And Sacrifice: My Life & Career.
Published by Writers Guild Kenya in November, the book traces his life from his humble beginnings as a child growing up in a rural setting to becoming one of the judges in the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (UN-ICTE) and later the United Nations Residual Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (UN-MICT).
“In this book, Lee enables us to see the embryonic days of his life and the twists and turns, beginning from under a Mugumo tree in Mugagu Village in Nyeri, Kenya, to the stellar heights that he has attained through grit,” writes Prof PLO Lumumba in his preface to the 307-page book that is set to be launched later this month.
From the book, it is evident that Mr Muthoga was at first reluctant to put pen to paper and ossify his story in book form. He only bowed to pressure from professional colleagues like Senior Counsel Judy Thongori, the renowned family law expert and his four daughters.
“Some said I had lived an admirable life and strongly encouraged me to record it so others could learn from me. Others noted that the legal profession and law practitioners could benefit from recording my life story — from being a student to a practitioner and Judge of an International Court,” writes Mr Muthoga, who hails from Othaya.
In addition to telling the story of his professional growth, the judge also offers readers a peek into his private life, revealing, for instance, that his wife of 42 years, Charity Kiama, died of cancer in 2019.
“I was very disappointed by the clinical management she received,” the author recounts, sharing a story of a long list of medical inefficiencies and oversights that many Kenyans are likely to identify with. “While I do not blame the doctors for Charity’s death, I regret the misinformation they gave us about the possibilities of treatment in India.”
But his is not only a story of loss. He recalls, with a light touch, how he was born under a Mugumo tree as his mother was returning home from the market. There, under the open sky, she delivered him with the help of passers-by, wrapped him with a piece of cloth and went on with her journey home.
Once he was through with his early education, he joined Dar-es-Salaam University College in Tanzania to study law, becoming one of the 45 students who had joined the department from the three East Africa Community member states. His time at the university was marked by many hilarious — and sometimes foolhardy — episodes both in and outside campus, and it only makes sense for a reader to dig in and savour the stories he shares because no amount of retelling can do justice to it.
Suffice it to say that after he graduated, he was enrolled as a pupil at Hamilton, Harrison and Mathews Advocates alongside peers like Daniel Aganyanya (now deceased) and Paul Ndung’u. However, he was lucky to have been exempted from the requirement for pupilage soon after and became an Advocate of the High Court in 1971, one year earlier than he had planned.
Mr Muthoga’s book is a pleasure to read. It has many nuggets that will make readers laugh, cry or take some time out to reflect, including snippets on how he represented the family of the late JM Kariuki in court.
“Reflecting on my life journey, one of the goals I did not achieve is becoming a member of Parliament (MP),” he muses, revealing that although he had always wanted to end up in politics, this dream was thwarted when Mwai Kibaki shifted his base from Bahati Constituency in Nairobi to Othaya in 1974. Kibaki represented the area until 2007, when he was both the Othaya MP as well as President of Kenya.
“It was unwise to vie against him,” he recalls, but one has to read the book to find out where else he sought to vie and why this came acropper.
As a bonus, Muthoga asked a few people in his inner circle to tell their stories about him in their own words, which has added flavour to the colourful book.
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