Jomo Kenyatta was afraid of being alone in the statehouse, says his second Vice President Joseph Murumbi, who served under him for about six months in 1969.
In her book "A Path Not Taken: The Story of Joseph Murumbi", Anne Thurston reveals details of her interviews with Murumbi, who also served as a minister in the first government.
Murumbi says that to avoid being all alone, Kenyatta would invite him to Statehouse claiming to have something to discuss with him, only to keep him there until evening.
Surprisingly, said Murumbi, nothing was discussed and at the same time they did not even sit together, but Kenyatta just wanted to have someone around the Statehouse.
He said that Kenyatta would call him when he returned home for lunch and tell him to instead head to statehouse where they would have lunch over some serious discussions.
“So I would go up to State House, have lunch with him, and he would tell me, ‘Now Joe, sit down here, order any drinks you want, coffee, tea, whiskey, anything you like. I’ll see you in a few minutes’,” Murumbi is quoted.
He says that Kenyatta would continue about his businesses with his guest in the waiting room for hours, and would check out every now and then and tell him that he will join him soon.
This would continue until his (Kenyatta) leaving time, 4 pm since he never slept in the Statehouse, and he would get into his vehicle and leave for his Gatundu home.
According to Murumbi, the inability to be all alone in the house on the hill was the reason why Kenyatta always had singers around entertaining him.
He related this to Kenyatta's solitary confinement at the Lokitaung Prison in West Pokot during the push for independence.
“He (didn’t) want to discuss anything with me, but he wants you to be around. He cannot be lonely. You know he has been in, kept under solitary confinement …and the effect of that (is) he cannot bear to be alone. He must have somebody around him. And I think that is the psychology behind these dances, people with him all the time," said Murumbi.