In the 15 years he was Kenya's Head of State, founding President Mzee Jomo Kenyatta never spent a night at the State House in Nairobi.
Kenyatta prefered sleeping at his home in Ichaweri, Gatundu in Kiambu County or in some cases at the State Houses in Nakuru or Mombasa.
Out of superstition, the President declined to retire at the Nairobi State House on grounds it was inhabited by 'colonial ghosts'.
Bernard Njinu, who operated as Presidential Escort Commander for years, recalled a day when Kenyatta woke up at night and ordered to be driven to his Gatundu home after the 'ghosts disturbed his sleep'.
In an interview with veteran journalist Kamau Ngotho, Njinu recalled it was him who had advised the President to spend the night in Nairobi after a pre-Jamhuri Day ball dance at City Hall lasted late into the night.
"He told us he could not catch sleep because colonial ghosts had invaded his bedroom," Njinu said as reported by Ngotho in his 'Memoirs From The Beat' column in the Sunday Nation.
Mzee Kenyatta also liked to sleep in a cool and silent environment.
Ngotho reports another incident when the Head of State ordered his guards to search for a chirping cricket which was disturbing him while asleep at a government guest house in Embu.
"Administration Police Officers had to be mobilised to hunt for the offending cricket which they clubbed to death," the journalist writes.
The State House in Nairobi was built in 1907 when Kenya was a British Colony and used to serve as the official residence of the Governor of British East Africa.
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