Grace Wambui Njoroge
Lovingly known as “Matron Grace”
10 February 1946 — 5 April 2023 · aged 77
Matron at Kenyatta National Hospital who delivered thousands of Nairobi's babies
Nairobi, Kenya Born in Limuru, Kiambu County Resting at Family farm, Kiambaa, Kiambu CountyAbout Grace
The night shift in the maternity wing at Kenyatta National Hospital in 1971 was two nurses short, and a twenty-five-year-old Grace Wambui delivered three babies before sunrise, went home, slept four hours and came back to deliver two more. That was how Grace worked for thirty-four years, and how a generation of Nairobi mothers came to name their daughters after her.
She was born in 1946 in Limuru among the tea terraces, the fourth of seven children. Her father, a church elder, held that a girl who could read could do anything, and she proved him right at the Kenya Medical Training College before joining Kenyatta National Hospital as a staff nurse in 1967. She rose to ward sister, then to nursing officer in charge of the maternity unit, and retired as Matron in 2001. She trained hundreds of young nurses and insisted that each of them learn to wash their hands 'as if the baby were your own'.
Grace married Samuel Maina Njoroge in 1968. Their home in Kiambaa smelled of mukimo with pumpkin leaves, and of the cardigans she knitted, without a pattern, for every grandchild and for the premature babies on her ward. She hummed hymns while she cooked, always half a tone higher than Samuel could manage, which he said was the secret of their harmony. In the Women's Guild at PCEA Thogoto she ran the sick-visiting rota for twenty years and never once missed a name.
After Samuel died in 2020 she kept his reading glasses beside her bed. Grace passed away peacefully in her sleep in April 2023, aged seventy-seven, in the house she had filled with people for half a century. She leaves three children, nine grandchildren and, somewhere in Nairobi, several thousand people who began their lives in her hands.
“Wash your hands as if the baby were your own.”
- Faith
- Christian
- Place of birth
- Limuru, Kiambu County
- Resting place
- Family farm, Kiambaa, Kiambu County
- Passed away
- 5 April 2023, Nairobi
Funeral Service
Thursday, 13 April 2023 at 07:00 UTC
Add to calendarLife journey
Diploma in Nursing
Kenya Medical Training College1964 – 1967 · Nairobi
Qualified in the same year she joined Kenyatta National Hospital.
Staff Nurse, then Ward Sister
Kenyatta National Hospital1967 – 1985 · Nairobi
Delivered babies through the night shifts of the 1970s.
Married Samuel Maina Njoroge
1968 · Limuru
Fifty-two years together until his death in 2020.
Matron, Maternity Unit
Kenyatta National Hospital1986 – 2001 · Nairobi
Trained hundreds of nurses and led the unit for fifteen years.
Sick-visiting rota leader
PCEA Thogoto Women's Guild1989 – 2009 · Kikuyu
Visited the sick and the bereaved every week for twenty years.
Excellence in Nursing Award
Kenyatta National Hospital1994 · Nairobi
For leadership of the maternity unit.
Tap an organisation to find others who studied or worked there.
Family & connections
Also remembered on Evermore
Grace is survived by
- David Kariuki Njoroge· Son
- Ruth Njeri Njoroge· Daughter
- Esther Wanjiku Njoroge· Daughter
- Beth Nyokabi· Sister
- 9 grandchildren· Grandchildren
Tributes & memories
6 people have shared a memory of Grace.
Knew Grace? Share a memory with the family and everyone who loved them.
Sign in to write a tribute- DO
Former house officer at Kenyatta National Hospital
In 1989 I was a frightened junior doctor and Sister Grace was the person who actually ran the ward. She taught me to listen to the mothers before the monitors. I carry that into every delivery room in Atlanta, and I will until I retire.
- EN
Daughter
Mum never shouted. She just went quiet, and we would all rush to fix whatever it was. At the end she asked for Dad's glasses and a cup of tea. Both were within reach. That was Mum: she made sure everyone else was within reach.
- BN
Younger sister
Grace was the sister who sent money home in her first month of pay and every month after. She never mentioned it. I found out only when mother showed me the little notebook where she wrote every shilling down, with Grace's name on each page.
- NC
Nurse she trained at KNH
Matron Grace inspected our hands every morning like a general inspects boots. She was strict, but if a student cried after a hard delivery she would find her a cup of tea and a quiet corner and say nothing. I have trained forty nurses since, and I use her sentences.
- SR
Family friend
Mama Grace welcomed my mother into her kitchen when we first moved to Nairobi and taught her to make chapati the way her own mother did. We still make them her way every Christmas, and we always say her name when we do. Rest well, mama.
- LK
Neighbour and Women's Guild friend
When my first child came early, it was Matron Grace who sat with me through the night, took my hand and told me to breathe like I was blowing out a candle. My daughter is now a nurse. She says she chose it because of the woman who knitted her first cardigan.
