There are funeral speeches that invite tears. Then there are those that leave mourners clutching their ribs in disbelief.
At the burial of Kisii Senator Richard Onyonka’s mother, the Kisumu Woman Rep Ruth Odinga grabbed the microphone and casually dropped a political love story decades in the making: “Richard Onyonka was my first boyfriend.”
Speaking in Swahili with the ease of a seasoned storyteller, Ruth Odinga transported mourners back to the restless energy of their school days, painting Senator Richard Onyonka as the kind of young man who turned heads long before he entered politics.
“Mimi nataka kusema hivi… Richard Onyonka alikuwa boyfriend wangu nikiwa Asumbi Girls,” she announced, sending the congregation into roaring laughter, whistles and stunned applause.
Ruth then tightened the punchline.
“Yeye alikuwa Kisii School; mimi nilikuwa Asumbi Girls. Hiyo wakati alikuwa moto kama pasi ya Philips!”
The tent exploded.
Mourners who moments earlier wore the long faces demanded by funerals suddenly bent over, laughing. Women slapped their knees. Men exchanged scandalised grins.
Younger politicians looked utterly unprepared for the revelation that Kenya’s senior political class once had functioning love lives.
“I Was Truly Yours!” Ruth Odinga Unveils Senator Onyonka as Her Boyfriend Back in the Day pic.twitter.com/UBBkrwwTje
— Uzalendo News (@UzalendoNews_KE) May 16, 2026
And Onyonka himself? The usually combative senator shrank into the rarest of political poses: embarrassment.
He laughed nervously, buried his face briefly in his hands and shook his head as the crowd howled around him.
Ruth, meanwhile, looked delighted by the chaos she had unleashed.
Power meeting power
But beneath the comedy sat something larger than romance.
This was not an ordinary schoolyard affair. It was power flirting with power.
Ruth was the daughter of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Kenya’s first vice president and one of the most formidable political figures in the country’s history.
Onyonka hailed from the prominent Onyonka family of Kisii, a lineage with deep ties to politics, academia, and government.
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This was aristocracy meeting aristocracy before either family became fully mythologised in Kenyan politics.
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