Achievers

William P. Mayaka

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Published on Monday, 06 August 2007 00:19

On June 1, 1963, Mangu High School near Nairobi was on recess, and Bill Mayaka, 17 years old, was at home with his family in Kisii. On this day, after 70 years of British rule, Kenya began ruling itself--a landmark now observed as Madaraka Day. His father, Zachary Angwenyi (by tradition, Mayaka's grandfather gave him his name), was the senior chief of Kisii's Kitutu location and was among those in charge of the celebrations. Although the new freedom brought a fresh rush of patriotism, Mayaka had known, long before, that he would devote the work of his life to Kenya.
In the early 1960s, in anticipation of emancipation, an eloquent young Kenyan statesman, Tom Mboya, organized "student airlifts," finding public and private funds to bring some of Kenya's brightest youngsters to study in the United States. Mboya's plan received support from President John Kennedy and from the heads of a number of U.S. colleges, including Colby president Robert E.L. Strider. One of these promising young students was Charles P. Angwenyi, Mayaka's cousin. Angwenyi graduated from Colby in 1964, continued his education at the University of Massachusetts, and then returned to Kenya. By 1980 he had been appointed chairman of the National Bank of Kenya, a key post from which he played a central role in the development of Kenya as an economic power in East Africa. Colby gave him an honorary doctorate in 1988, three years before his untimely death of a heart attack. Charles and Susan Angwenyi's son Peter enrolled last fall and was named Colby's outstanding freshman man in the Class of 2000 in the spring.
Charles Angwenyi encouraged Mayaka to attend Colby. "He believed strongly in the power of education," Mayaka recalled, "especially a liberal arts education. And he dearly loved Colby." In 1969, Mayaka followed his cousin to Mayflower Hill.

Mayaka was then, as now, a serious student with an insatiable appetite for information, a compulsion for precision and an uncanny ability to remember facts, dates and other details. (His understanding of U.S. history and politics would rival that of any American. His favorite book is David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest, and his idols are Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.)

Entering Colby in the turbulent Vietnam War era, Mayaka found the experience "fascinating." And, no doubt, mystifying. He was, others recall, an "observer" of both the war protesters and black student demonstrators, often unable to fathom the passion but always eager to understand the issues.

"I found all kinds of encouragement and support at Colby," he said, crediting especially emeriti professors Yvonne Richmond Knight '55 and Walter Zukowski and the late Lucille Pinette Zukowski '37 as three who urged him to learn and to train so he could return and help his young country. "Of the six fellow high school students who went to the United States to study, all but one returned to Kenya and all are playing important roles in the advancement of Kenya," he said. "I am proud of them."

The year after his graduation from Colby, while on a visit to Kenyatta University, he met Alice Kemunto Mokogi, a bright and attractive young high school science teacher. They were married that same year. Since 1986 she has worked for the Kenya Institute of Education, where she now heads a national chemistry curriculum development team. The couple has three sons: Christopher, a French major who returns to Colby as a junior this fall; Robert (named for Strider), soon to graduate from the International Baccalaureate Program at the prestigious St. Mary's School in Nairobi; and Samuel, 15, attending the Lenana secondary boarding school, also in Nairobi. Mayaka began his career in public service in 1976 as assistant secretary in the Ministry of Finance, where he was responsible for coordinating programs for bilateral donors from countries including the U.S. and for the World Bank and United Nations agencies.

In 1979 he was accepted into a year-long postgraduate program in political and economic development at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. There he was befriended by one of the university's most prominent scholars, the late Arthur Lewis, whom he credits with developing much of the philosophy that guides his work today. Following a year with his family at Princeton, he returned to Kenya as senior assistant secretary in the finance ministry and, over the next several years, served as deputy secretary in the ministries of local government (1987), agriculture (1989), environment and natural resources (1991) and labor and manpower development (1993).

In the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, he worked to resolve problems that had impeded the implementation of a World Bank-sponsored forestry development project and was a key player in the planning of the 1992 U.N. Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro. And in the Ministry of Labor and Manpower Development, he assisted in Kenya's implementation of the International Program for the Elimination of Child Labor and coordinated the ministry's preparation for the 1995 World Summit for Social Development, in Copenhagen.

Bill Mayaka and family With the support of his ministry, he spent the 1995-96 academic year at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, earning a master's degree in public administration while his son Christopher was a freshman at Colby. The week before his Harvard commencement, he received word that he had been named permanent secretary of the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources. "Having been allowed the privilege of attending some of the best educational institutions in the United States," he said, "I have always felt it was an obligation to make use of what I have learned in government service."

His responsibilities in filling this obligation are daunting. The ministry is large--12,000 employees and an annual budget of $130 million--and rife with political and philosophical conflict over how to encourage development while preserving the environment. "Kenya's greatest problem is poverty," Mayaka explains, "and we struggle to find ways to grow and expand the economy while at the same time preserve our natural resources." A tall order for a nation of 28 million that has the world's most rapidly growing population (at 3 percent plus, annually), but Mayaka, who routinely works from 5 a.m. until midnight, seems equal to the task. Kenya's leadership has affirmed that the integration of development and environmental protection is the only path to a sustainable future, and, in an effort to turn this vision into action, Mayaka's ministry has prepared a comprehensive legislative package that he believes will strike a reasonable balance. He is confident that Parliament will adopt the plan, which includes a combination of educational programs and firm environmental laws.

In his role as permanent secretary, Mayaka oversees activities of the National Environmental Action Plan (NEAP), designed to achieve goals set forth by the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. Workshops around the country have involved the public and private sectors, including academics and community leaders, to ensure broad agreement with and participation in reaching NEAP objectives. "Things are getting better," he said, "but we have a very long way to go."
Many at home in Kisii had anticipated his promotion to this highest of government service positions--his steady devotion to work and his extraordinary educational background made him exceptionally well qualified. But in Kenya such appointments are assigned not only on the basis of qualification and experience--where he excels--but also on geography. Mayaka's appointment by President Daniel arap Moi in the spring of 1996 was widely praised among the 1.2 million people of the Kisii district, where Mayaka's popularity also arises in no small measure from his ability to blend old traditions and cultural obligations with the demands of modern statesmanship. On the same day that he began preparations for an African mining investment symposium to be held in Denver, for instance, he also arranged the purchase of four live goats to appease a family that had refused to bury the body of an estranged wife in the yard of her matrimonial home.
In Nairobi he is a member of an internationally recognized government; in Kisii he must also be a facilitator for constituents who seek jobs, school placement for their children and a myriad of other favors. No day passes without dozens of special appeals from constituents for fund drives for needy causes. At their home in Nairobi, the Mayakas have a steady flow of visitors from Kisii, often unexpected but always received graciously and welcomed for meals. Mayaka's unfailing warmth and good humor impart no sense of his hectic, seemingly impossible schedule. And here, behind the locked gates of the compound, he also finds time to help tend gardens of magnificent flowers. "Uncle Bill is a shining example of true patriotism and dedication to good causes and to the youth who know him, like myself, " Peter Angwenyi said.

The popularity he has earned from his careful balancing of duties has prompted many to encourage him to run for a seat in Parliament. But Mayaka says he is not interested in elective politics. "I have other responsibilities," he said, "especially to the people of my district who rely upon me."
Besides, politics is a risky business in Kenya. One party, the Kenya African National Union, has ruled since 1963, when Kenya became a republic, first under founding president Jomo Kenyatta and, after Kenyatta's death in 1978, under Moi. Today, there are increasing challenges from the opposition parties (there are 10), and a continuing battle over constitutional reform threatens general elections to be held this fall. This June, on the eve of the national Madaraka Day observation, government security forces clashed with opposition demonstrators, sparking protests and looting in central Nairobi. Mayaka is never distant from the fray, but as a civil servant he is able to give such conflicts a wide berth. "It is my obligation, as I see it, to return as much as I can to my own country," he said. "I can do that best right where I am."