Samuel Maina Njoroge
Premium memorialLovingly known as “Mzee Maina”
20 July 1943 — 17 November 2020 · aged 77
Kenya Power engineer who lit up Kiambu's villages, and a deacon who never missed Sunday
Nairobi, Kenya Born in Kiambaa, Kiambu County Resting at Family farm, Kiambaa, Kiambu CountyAbout Samuel
If you drive the lanes around Kiambaa at dusk and watch the lamps come on one by one, you are looking at the work of Samuel Maina Njoroge. He was born in 1943 to a coffee-picking mother and a tailor father, and he was the first boy from his village to win a place at Alliance High School. His mother walked him to the bus stop in Kikuyu town with his only pair of shoes tied around his neck, so that he would arrive with them clean.
After a diploma at the Kenya Polytechnic he joined the East African Power and Lighting Company in 1966, later Kenya Power, and for thirty-seven years he ran line crews across Kiambu, Murang'a and Nyandarua. He treated electricity as a promise rather than a product. When a village could not afford its poles he quietly found a way, and more than one primary school got its first bulb because of an 'inspection' that happened to fall at lunchtime. He retired in 2003 as Regional Distribution Engineer, famous in the depot for never leaving a fault overnight.
Home was a tin-roofed bungalow with a vegetable garden he guarded like a bank. In 1968 he married Grace Wambui, a young nurse at Kenyatta National Hospital, and for fifty-two years they disagreed fondly about open windows: she wanted them open, he wanted them shut. He fixed every neighbour's radio, kept a drawer of fuses for all comers, listened to the BBC at six every evening, and on Sundays sat on the deacons' bench at PCEA Thogoto, singing a gruff bass line he never once learned to read.
Samuel died peacefully at home in November 2020, with Grace beside him and a hymn playing on the radio. He leaves his wife, three children, nine grandchildren, and a lane full of lights.
“A fault left overnight is a promise broken.”
- Faith
- Christian
- Place of birth
- Kiambaa, Kiambu County
- Resting place
- Family farm, Kiambaa, Kiambu County
- Passed away
- 17 November 2020, Nairobi
Funeral Service
Tuesday, 24 November 2020 at 09:00 UTC
Add to calendarLife journey
Alliance High School
Alliance High School1957 – 1960 · Kikuyu, Kiambu
First boy from his village to win a place; mended the dormitory torches.
Diploma in Electrical Engineering
Kenya Polytechnic1961 – 1964 · Nairobi
Specialised in power distribution.
Regional Distribution Engineer
Kenya Power and Lighting Company1966 – 2003 · Nairobi
Brought mains electricity to villages across Kiambu, Murang'a and Nyandarua.
Married Grace Wambui
1968 · Limuru
A marriage of fifty-two years.
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Family & connections
Also remembered on Evermore
Samuel is survived by
- Grace Wambui Njoroge· Spouse
- David Kariuki Njoroge· Son
- Ruth Njeri Njoroge· Daughter
- Esther Wanjiku Njoroge· Daughter
- 9 grandchildren· Grandchildren
Tributes & memories
6 people have shared a memory of Samuel.
Knew Samuel? Share a memory with the family and everyone who loved them.
Sign in to write a tribute- DM
Nephew, Manchester
Uncle Maina hosted me in Kiambaa when I was fifteen and failing physics. He took the back off a radio, laid every part on a newspaper and said, 'Now it is just a story you have not read yet.' I became an engineer. I wish I had told him more often.
- MN
Classmate at Alliance High School
We shared a dormitory in 1958. Maina was the one who repaired our torches with wire and chewing gum, and he already talked about bringing electricity home. He did. Sixty years later he still called me 'Prefect' whenever we met, and I still stood up straighter.
- SG
Elder at PCEA Thogoto Church
For thirty-eight years Samuel sat on the deacons' bench and for thirty-eight years he sang flat, loudly and with complete conviction. The choir loved him anyway. After he passed we also discovered he had been quietly paying the fees of three Sunday school children.
- SR
Family friend from Eldoret
I only met Mzee Samuel a handful of times, at weddings and harambees, but every time he asked about my studies and remembered exactly what I had told him the year before. That kind of attention is rare. My deepest condolences to Ruth and the whole family. Lala salama, mzee.
- JK
Former colleague at Kenya Power
I joined Maina's crew as a green graduate in 1984. He made me spend my first month climbing with the linesmen before he let me near a drawing board. 'The drawing does not know where the mud is,' he said. Half the engineers in Central Region learned that sentence from him.
- LK
Neighbour of forty years in Kiambaa
Mzee Maina once climbed a pole at ten at night in the rain because my mother's shop had gone dark, and he refused to take a shilling. He said light was not something you charge a neighbour for. Every time I flip a switch I still hear him say it.
