There are two things that Kenya's founding President Mzee Jomo Kenyatta had a strong liking for; land and cash money.
Those who knew him well say Kenyatta demanded what he called in Gikuyu 'mbeca bari bari' (crisp notes) when receiving money after a deal.
When former Kiambaa MP Stanley Githunguri bought a plot from him in the mid-1970s, he had offered to deposit the money in Mzee's bank account but the President had other plans.
"Don’t bank the money," Kenyatta told Githunguri. "Bring it to me in cash".
Speaking to veteran journalist Kamau Ngotho in a past interview, the former MP recalled when he delivered the Sh200,000 payment to Kenyatta, he fondly touched the new banknotes, smelt them, and handed them back to him.
"Now you can go deposit the money in my account," Kenyatta said, as Ngotho writes in his Memoirs From the Beat column published by Nation.
Githunguri was paying for the plot that he later built the multi-billion Lilian Towers in Nairobi's Koinange Street.
Kenyatta's love for crisp notes could have been triggered after he visited the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) safe in the late 1960s.
The President made his first visit to CBK moments after Duncan Ndegwa, the first black Central Bank governor, took over from his predecessor Dr Leon Baranski.
In his memoirs, Walking in Kenyatta Struggles: My Story, Ndegwa writes that when the Head of State toured the institution he demanded to be taken to the vaults, the strongroom where money is kept.
On arriving at the facility and seeing a mountain of new banknotes stored there, the first thing Kenyatta did was to chase away his bodyguards who had accompanied him.
"We took him to the bank vaults and on seeing the cartons and crates of banknotes stacked all over, his mouth seemed to sag. He then looked over his shoulder at his security detail. He waved them away impatiently," said Ndegwa.
Ndegwa says the President argued that a sight so privileged could unsettle such humble minds and tempt them to commit a robbery.
"When his security men were gone, he asked me in almost a whisper, "Ndegwa, is all this money?" I replied in the affirmative," he writes in his book which was serialised by Nation in December 2006.
The former governor notes he 'lied' to Kenyatta since what is kept at CBK safe is not cash money but mere paper money.
"We would not have incurred a loss if all of it had been consumed by fire. Money, in reality, gets value only after it is issued to banks and used as a means of exchange, store of value and unit of accounting," he stated.
From that day, it is reported that Kenyatta, even in old age, wanted to keep his money so he could touch it and feel it.
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