October 20 has always been a special date in Kenya.
For 63 years in fact it has been celebrated the day of birth, in 1889, of the first president of Kenya, the "Father of the Fatherland" Jomo Kenyatta.
At first it was celebrated by political activists who saw in him the man who would lead the country to independence, then from 1963 October 20 of each year became a national holiday, as "Kenyatta Day".
After the adoption of the new constitution, in 2010, the "ad personam" holidays disappeared in the country and Kenyatta father has been associated with other national heroes who deserve to be remembered on the same day. First of all, the revolutionary activists who together with him were imprisoned in Kapenguria, on the Turkana road, by the British on the charge of being inspirers and minds of the Mau Mau movement. They were Achieng' Oneko, Bildad Kaggia, Fred Kubai, Kung'u Karumba and Paul Ngei, better known as the "Kapenguria Six".
However, there are even older national heroes, such as the first Kenyan "pasionaria", the rebel Mijikenda Mekatilili Wa Menza. Born in the hinterland of Kilifi and lived on the outskirts of Malindi, she fought against the harsh conditions to which the peasants of Malindi and its surroundings were forced, arriving to slap a British officer in public. For this and for having planned an attack against a settlers' vehicle, she was imprisoned twice in the detention camp (a sort of concentration camp) in Kisii, in Maasai land. Both times she managed to escape and while the first time she was captured, the second time, after almost 1000 kilometers on foot, she returned triumphant to her people, welcomed as a queen. Eventually, after the First World War, the coastal governors of the British Empire came to terms with her and the local peasants and granted them better treatment.
National hero is also the politician Harry Thuku, leader of the Kikuyu Youth Association, founded in 1921. In fact the first national party in Kenya. For this in 1922 he was arrested and that action led to the first major street protest of the Kenyan people. Thuku was exiled in Somalia for nine years. Subsequently, he resumed his political activity, although always with moderate and pacifying tones, becoming a coffee grower and the first African member of the Union of Coffee Growers of Kenya.
Among the heroes of the Resistance was also the revolutionary Dedan Kimathi, leader of the Mau Mau, the extremist and violent wing of the Kenyan liberation movement. Kimathi was executed by the British army in 1957. Also worthy of mention are two brilliant politicians who were victims of mysterious murders in the 1960s, the "African Kennedy" Tom Mboya and the socialist Pio Gama Pinto.
Recently, in addition to Nobel Peace Prize winner Wathari Maathai, the first African woman to receive this recognition, the title of Mashujaa was also given to the great spiritual leader of the Mijikenda Katana Kalulu, who was barbarously assassinated in 2014, the veteran of the Mau Mau Kitu Wa Kahengeri and the lawyer Joseph Karisa Mwarandu who, after having sued the British government for the torture suffered in the 1950s by their own countrymen, through a trial lasting years in London, managed to obtain compensation that was anything but symbolic. The list is always growing and lately it includes anyone who carries high the value of the Kenyan flag. For this reason, two years ago the honor went to the marathon runner Eliud Kipchoge who, as the record holder of the Olympic competition, fell below 2 hours after an epic solo race followed live by over a billion people around the world.