Njuguna, Harrison Kamande (1928–2013)

Harrison Kamande Njuguna was as an active member of the SDA Church at Mombasa and a leading choir leader in Kenya.

Early Life

born in 1928. He was the son of Ibrahim Ndura and Ruth Njeri.¹ Kamande began his early school at Maria-ini Primary School in Murang’a, Central Kenya before transferring to Karura Adventist Primary School. He sat and passed the Common Entrance Exam (CEE) and then moved to Intermediate School at the Kamagambo School in Migori County, south-western Kenya. Here, he completed the Form Two class. He passed his final exams and was accepted into Bugema Missionary College in Uganda for advanced studies. After Bugema, he moved to Tanga in Tanganyika where he joined the College of Accountancy.²

Becoming an Adventist

Before he became an Adventist, Kamande was a member of Anglican Church. He became an Adventist and was baptized in 1958 at the Kirurumo Church, which was under Kagwathi Church in Murang’a. Kagwathi was founded by Justus Kang’ethe in 1937.³ When the grass-thatched church structure built of mud and wattle at Kagwathi was burned to ashes by the Mau Mau in 1953, the terrorized members were scattered, and some even abandoned their faith. Kamande provided a place of worship at his homestead by faithfully holding church services there, often at great risk. He soon married Elizabeth Wamaitha.

Career

When he completed his accountancy course, Kamande was employed as an accountant by the East African Railways and Harbors (EAR&H) and worked in Mwanza, Dar es Salaam, Tanga, and Mombasa. It was while working at Mwanza that he came across an advert for the Mugambo wa Urathi Bible Correspondence School and enrolled.⁴ The lessons re-established what he had learned at Karura and Kamagambo and quickly rebuilt his faith. Kamande and his wife Elizabeth were baptized in 1958.

Soon, the question of how to handle the Sabbath arose. His employer demanded that everyone worked from Monday to Saturday afternoon. Kamande decided to obey God and prayed about the situation. Miraculously, his employer relented, and he was allowed the day off on Sabbath with the condition that he would find his own time to compensate for the five hours he would have worked on Saturday. With this decision, he had to give up any chance for promotion, so he thus remained in the same paygrade.

Contribution

He was an active member of the SDA Church at Mombasa and was also a choir leader. He was also the lead chorister in many public gospel crusades in Mombasa and beyond. He retired from the Kenya Railways Corporation in 1985 and returned to his rural home in Murang’a County. He immediately revived the Kagumo-ini Church, which had been destroyed by the Mau Mau freedom fighters in 1953. He also built a prayer house at his homestead. He also helped put up a permanent church building at Manjuu on a piece of land that he had purchased for this purpose. The members of the Manjuu Church have since started a church school. He passed away in 2013 and was laid to rest at his home in Kagumo-ini Sub-location, Gaichanjiru Location in Kandara Sub-county, Murang’a County.

Sources

Wangai, Frederick K. The Power of the Word, A History of the Seventh-day Adventism in Central Kenya. Nairobi: Grandmaster, 2021.

Notes

1. Frederick K. Wangai, The Power of the Word, A History of the Seventh-day Adventism in Central Kenya (Grandmaster, 2021), 50.↩

2. Ibid.↩

3. Ibid.↩

4. Mugambo Wa Urathi was the Voice of Prophecy Bible correspondence course specially translated to the Kikuyu language. It helped open up the Kikuyu country that had previously been besieged by the Mau Mau war in the early 1950s.↩