The Untold Story of Dorcas Rigathi

There were other traumas caused by being ridiculed and forced to undress in front of adults when, as a young partial orphan, she was unable to buy a new dress for Christmas like her cousins.

Just when she and her husband had almost reached the pinnacle of power and influence, life threw her another curveball.

Throwing out my husband Rigathi Gachaguaa week ago from the position of vice president was another sordid moment in the eventful life of the 58-year-old.

Photos of Mrs. Gachagua crying and holding her husband’s arm as they were released from Karen Hospital after being admitted to hospital for chest pains several days ago captured the imagination of many. It was a concise illustration of a sudden change in status.

In 2022, she eagerly took up the duties of the vice president’s wife, traveling around the country implementing various projects.

In an interview with Nation.Africa just weeks before the 2022 general election, she stated that she wanted to focus on youth and women. Her priority was the fight against drug addiction.

When Kenya’s Kwanza coalition won, it tried to stay true to its ambitions. When you review the press releases her team sent to the newsroom regarding her activities, it becomes clear that she was a woman on a mission.

This is just one of the many setbacks that have befallen Ms. Gachagua, who has had to face a difficult life alongside her seven siblings since her father died when she was 11 years old.

From being a poor, jigger-infested girl to entering Alliance Girls High School when the chances of getting into high school were slim; from a “depressed” university student who one day breached the president’s security only to be assassinated, to being the vice president’s wife, Ms. Gachagua’s life has been a rollercoaster.

One of her first setbacks in life was moving from her home in Murang’a to the Kiandutu slum in Thika after her father’s death.

But even before his father’s death, the family was experiencing difficulties. The father, a businessman, was in prison due to the loss of goods in transit.

“One time someone asked him to transport blankets and they were stolen. And so he went to prison,” Ms. Gachagua said in an interview.

While he was behind bars, his business collapsed. Ms. Gachagua’s mother was forced to sell her father’s two stores in Nakuru, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

He spent about four years in prison. After being released, he tried to regain his strength.

“He died of depression,” Ms. Gachagua said.

As if that wasn’t enough, their mother disappeared shortly after their father’s death. She was gone for six months.

“We didn’t know where she was,” Ms. Gachagua noted.

This sudden period of parental absence hit young children hard and that was when some of them decided to become domestic helpers.

“When my mother was gone, we had no place to stay; we lived in a chicken coop. So we would come to our grandmother (on our mother’s side). Our father was an orphan. When he died, the eight of us went to our grandmother’s house, without our mother,” Ms. Gachagua said.

“Our uncles didn’t want us to stay with grandma, and grandma didn’t want to send us away. So she gave us a chicken run that was outside,” she said, adding that this was the time when jiggers attacked them.

“In fact, one of our sisters died outside of pneumonia. When my mother arrived, she was no longer there,” Ms. Gachagua added.

She recalled how she was once ridiculed by an adult who bought his children new clothes for Christmas and mocked Ms. Gachagui and her sister into believing that the clothes were theirs before the bomb fell.

“He (a relative we will not name) came with two dresses and gave them to us,” Ms. Gachagua said, noting that they were happy to put them on and return to the living room.

“We walked out and he looked at us and asked, ‘When you think about yourselves, do you think you deserve to wear clothes like that?’ We were told to remove them in front of everyone. And that’s what happened,” Ms. Gachagua said.

The mother returned after some time.

“Actually, she (mother) got sick. She was in hospital. She came and later told us that she had been in Kiambu Hospital for those six months. So when she came back, she found us working as maids. Others tried to make a living by going to septic tanks, drinking coffee, and doing all this so that we could support ourselves. When she returned, we have now moved from our rural home to Kiandutu in Thika,” Ms Gachagua said.

Mrs. Gachagua remembers that due to lack of money to purchase water, Kiandutu used water that most residents would not dare touch because it came from a well located near the cemetery.

“It was a well for the poor because people said the water came from the dead,” she said.

And what clothes did she wear then? She remembers that these were her father’s shirts.

“Our father left his shirts. So we siblings shared the shirts. It was worn from Monday to Sunday,” Ms. Gachagua said.

“So you went (to the well), took off your shirt, washed it and waited for it to dry while you were naked. It was very traumatic. I remember that the people we went to school with could afford to buy water, but we couldn’t afford it,” Ms. Gachagua recalled.

She received her primary education at Mugumoini Primary School in Thika. Financial constraints forced her to attend the same class as her brother. This was a blessing in disguise as they were fierce competitors, which ensured our success in our primary school exams.

“We passed very well and were both accepted into Alliances: I went to Alliance Girls and he went to Alliance High School,” Ms. Gachagua said.

But the party was the only good news. There was a mountain to climb in terms of school fees and uniforms.

It was thanks to the intervention of a district officer that she managed to join the Alliance.

“I think someone told them that two of the children did very well in the exam and would not go to school. So he came and picked us up and bought us uniforms. He also paid his yearly school fees. From there we went to Alliance and finished our education on scholarships. I remember that (former Gatundu MP) Ngengi Muigai also gave us the scholarship,” Ms Gachagua said.

When Ms. Gachagua joined Form One, things almost improved. One of her sisters worked at the Kenya Commercial Bank and even managed to get a loan to enable her mother to buy a truck to transport the items.

However, this sister died in an accident, which was a blow to the family.

“She was the one who helped my mother with transport, harvesting corn and so on. Without her, everything went wrong again. Due to the loan, we had to take the truck with us. My mother couldn’t pay. And the land we had in Murang’a was going to be sold to pay off the truck loan,” Ms. Gachagua said. “We are back in a serious financial crisis.”

“It was very bad for me. I asked myself, “What is all this?” You fall into a vicious circle. When you’re about to leave, you dive right in. Of course we know that God acted. But when you get into all this trouble, sometimes it feels like you’re not focusing on anything other than the problems you’re going through,” Ms. Gachagua said.

With Alliance, she passed her A-level exams at St Francis and then went to Kenyatta University where she studied education. It was during her studies that they crossed paths with Mr. Gachagua, who organized student delegations to visit then-President Daniel arap Moi.

Gachagua was a student at the University of Nairobi.

They later began courting each other and married in 1989.

Looking through the photos the family has shared in 2022, it’s clear that these two share a close bond, and their fun side won’t be missed in some of the photos. In many of their photos together, her husband is more matter-of-fact.

In an interview ahead of the 2022 general elections, Ms. Gachagua talked about her courtship strategy.

“He didn’t try to push too hard. Even though he knew I was trying to get away from him, he sent girls he knew were my friends to get me,” she said.

After graduation, Ms. Gachagua did not continue teaching, but instead entered banking.

“I am a professional banker,” Ms. Gachagua said.

At the beginning of their marriage, Mrs. Gachagua was a banker and Mr. Gachagua was a district clerk. Using their earnings, they engaged in various businesses, including: selling vegetables, chips and sweets. Later they took up farming.

A successful phase of her life had begun. They moved from a one-room house to a larger one. More and more investments flowed in, and by the time Gachagua became a parliamentarian in 2017, her struggling days were long gone.

She left the banking world in 2006 to manage family businesses and enter church ministry.

Her life was on track and the victory of the Ruto-Gachagua ticket in 2022 pushed her to the top. Now she was toying with who was who in the corridors of power. Her duties included visiting rehabilitated boys in Nyeri, widows in Kajiado, fire victims in Kibera, participating in a widows’ summit in Zanzibar, and another group of widows in Migori.

She also visited churches. During the August 2022 interview, Ms. Gachagua also mentioned the connection between the church and politics.

“There is no difference between the people the deputy president serves and the people I serve in the church. Their needs are the same. If the economy is sick, that means that even here, there will be so many people coming in with depression. But if the economy is doing very well, you can see that the Church is also doing very well. If a family does well in the church, it will do well in government. So we need to learn how to combine them to improve the quality of services provided to people,” she said.

“I know people say that the church and politics are very distant from each other, but I think it’s a creation of the people and the press when they want to separate the church because they know that the church people are the same people who will vote for you. So how is it possible that the Church and politics do not go hand in hand? According to the Bible, from the very beginning, church and politics have always mixed,” she added.

She was ordained a priest in 2011 at House of Grace Ministries.

After accusing her husband, Mrs. Gachagua was caught in a storm.

In papers tabled in parliament by Kibwezi West MP Mwengi Mutuse, author of the impeachment motion against Gachagua, Ms Gachagua was named as a key part of Gachagua’s business empire. However, on Thursday, the Senate rejected calculations that linked many companies they co-own with economic crimes.

Gachagua has repeatedly mentioned that her initiatives for the baby boy need support even without government funding, but all this could fade away.

Now, as she awaits the court’s decision on the impeachment motion, Ms. Gachagua will struggle to move from the vice president’s official residence to Karen’s Nairobi home.