Ambassador Orie Rogo Manduli is dead. Reports reaching us confirm that the former politician passed on at her Riverside home after suffering ill health for the past few months.
Orie will be remembered as a phenomenal woman who enthralled Kenyans with her eclectic overhead hairdo and her will to fight for what she believed in.
The late Orie was born in Maseno to Gordon Rogo, a headmaster and later a councillor, and Zeruiah Adhiambo who taught at Kisumu Technical College.
Her birth names were Mary Orie Rogo but that changed to Mary Orie Rogo Ondieki after her first marriage. Her reason for shortening the name was that it had become too long to pronounce.
She was also a trained teacher who never stepped into a classroom to teach as she got married immediately after attending Machakos Teachers College.
In her first marriage, she was blessed with three beautiful daughters, Elizabeth, Allison and Janice before getting a divorce after five years of matrimony.
In 1980, the former KBC host would remarry former Zambian president, Frederick Chiluba's cousin, Norman Manduli.
Mr. Manduli was a politician and a businessman in Lusaka who worked across Africa. That is how her name changed to Orie Rogo Manduli.
Manduli who often described herself as “lioness in her cage", will also be remembered as the first woman of African descent to participate in the East African Safari Rally in 1974 and 1975.
May her sould rest in peace.
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