Joseph Odero Jowi.

Secrets

In dire straits

Walking aimlessly in the streets

I let you on my secret as we greet

Joseph OderoJowi (August 15, 1936 –October 17, 2015) was a Kenyan diplomat. He represented Kenya in the United Nations for several years, working to bring the United Nations Environment Programme’s headquarters to Nairobi.

Biography going on with their lives but are burdened with bag luggage. As a result, do not make it worse by adding salt to injury.

To be frank nobody wants to talk much about secrets because you might be guarding jealously yours that you do not want people to get to know of. However, we cannot dispel the fact the air of secrecy has an appealing effect. Its human nurture to be intrigued by wanting to know more even if it doesn’t concern you. Needless to mention, some secrets have torn families apart. That said, it’s a tricky situation to deal with other people’s secrets. Bottom line is deal with other people’s secrets as if they were yours. When somebody lets you on a secret they will be looking for an avenue to set their burned soul free. In other words, that person trusts you to do the right thing that they would have asked. In fact, nurture your personal relationships that there won’t be bad blood afterwards.

Do not divulge this information even in greed

I kneel down to make a daily Creed

Yes, father I have sinned

Set me free from my transgression I plead

As my confidante please take heed

As I hide, in hindsight I bleed

When secrets enter a family, they can either enhance or undermine that connection.

Benign family secrets that can increase closeness include things like children sharing a “secret” language from their parents or family units sharing inside jokes and traditions.

The secrets are rooted in joy and intimate sharing of knowledge.

PPOEM

Jowi was born on August 15, 1936 in Sori, Kenya, and attended the village’s primary school, the Kisii School and the Kagumo Teachers College. He also spent several years in India at the universities of Calcutta and New Delhi, studying economics.

He was principal of the African Labour College in Kampala, Uganda, from 1961 to 1963. In 1963 he married Salome and returned to Kenya.

In 1966 Jowi was elected to represent the Ndhiwa

Constituency in the Kenyan National Assembly. He worked in the Ministry of Labour, then the Ministry of Finance.

By Dr. Jean Kamau Excerpts

It was Odero, then serving as Kenya’s Ambassador to the United Nations in New York, who pulled through the unprecedented diplomatic coup in 1972 that saw a major UN agency move – for the first time – outside the United States and Western Europe into the Third World. The feat earned him instant international acclaim.

In 1969 Jowi briefly served as minister for economic planning and development in Kenya’s cabinet after Tom Mboya, who had held the role, was assassinated.He lost reelection later that year, and was appointed Kenya’s ambassador to the United Nations. In that role, Jowi was a key figure in getting the United Nations Environment Programme’s headquarters to be placed in Nairobi in the early 1970s. In 1974 he left the UN to be re-elected to the Kenyan Parliament, representing Ndhiwa. However, three years later Jowi resigned and returned to the United Nations.

In 2007 Jowi was awarded named an Elder of the Order of the Burning Spear. In 2014 he was described as living in a housing development in Langata, Kenya, with his wife.

He died on October 17, 2015.

“That was something I worked really hard to win,” Odero explains. Today, the once eloquent, imposing and articulate diplomat and Cabinet minister who brought great honour to Kenya and the African continent is alive, but certainly not well.

The super diplomat is nowhere on the radar of the Government he served with so much distinction. Odero, perhaps better known locally by the older generation for his brief stint as Minister for Economic Planning and Development after the assassination of Tom Mboya in 1969 is, sadly, a forgotten giant.

Joseph Odero Jowi