From banking to health, education to media, there are very Kenyans whose lives have not been impacted by His Highness the Aga Khan, who died last week and was buried in Egypt on Sunday.
I, for instance, remember how my grandfather, Samuel Munyiri, used to make cigarette rolls from old Taifa Leo newspapers, and how I would read the ‘Kibogoyo Akujibu’ columns as I watched him make the cigarettes that he would then keep in the space between his earlobe and his head for later consumption. It is possible that I became a journalist from that early interaction with the fascinating stories that I used to read in my grandfather’s left-over newspapers.
I suspect there are many with such heart-warming stories to tell; whether it was the birth of a child at an Aga Khan hospital or the sharing of a hearty Valentine’s Day dinner at a Serena Hotel.
The Aga Khan may have passed on, but the enduring lesson we can all learn from him lies in the value of building institutions that will outlive us and that go beyond the mere pursuit of profit to change people’s lives for the better. The 49th Imam of the Shia Imami Ismaili was the epitome of visionary leadership.
His stewardship of the Aga Khan Development Network was a testament of how one man can inspire so many others to serve humanity, putting the welfare of ordinary people at the centre of every Aga Khan institution that would otherwise have been just one more addition to the capitalistic enterprises that pursue profit by all means necessary.
One of the monuments that will always stand as a reminder of the contribution that the Aga Khan made to the history of Kenya is the Nation Centre, also known as “the twin towers”. During the years of President Moi’s repression of the Kenyan people, the media platforms that the Nation published stood up to his dictatorship, shining a light of hope at a time when Kenyans were literally wandering in a political wilderness.
Because of the work that these mouthpieces of the people undertook, the spirit of freedom, which was flickering in the hearts of many, eventually burst into a flame when, after a long and bloody struggle, Kenya embraced political pluralism and put an end to the Nyayo torture chambers that had crushed the bodies of second liberation heroes.
Today, the Aga Khan Development Network has spread its reach to various aspects of life, offering medical services in numerous counties, not to mention middle class neighbourhoods in cities and emerging urban areas.
It has invested in all levels of education, creating an intricate network of academic institutions that are spread out in various countries, developed and developing.
And it is involved in restoration of heritage sites, in addition to creating a system for architects from all over the world to come up with marvels that will transform urban spaces, the way people work and how they live.
Each one of us can learn from him even if we do not scale our visions as much as he did. In our spaces, we can aspire to be instruments of personal as well as collective growth and development; we can seek to mentor and build others so that they, too, can make their contribution to humanity; and we can strive to create systems that work for all without disenfranchising others. For that is what the spirit of the Aga Khan, as I knew it, stood for.
He valued human dignity, and he built institutions that breathed life into this core value. He may not have been as appreciated in life as he ought to have been, but then again, that is the mark of the man who stood in the background and nudged others forward to shine.
The world is, without a doubt, the worse off without him. However, all of us are hoping that his son, Shah Rahim al-Hussaini Aga Kha, will be the worthy successor; the apple that has not fallen too far from the tree. What matters, though, is that there is a touch of the Aga Khan in each one of us.
We can choose to lay it to rest now that he is gone, but it is also within our power to make it sprout with new life as a tribute to the man who lit that flame in us at various points of our lives.
Mbugua is a scholar at the Aga Khan University Graduate School of Media and Communications. Mbugua@nairobilawmonthly.com
For more tributes to the Aga Khan, get you copy of the Nairobi Business Monthly, Jan-Feb edition at https://epaper.nairobibusinessmonthly.com/
