By Harold Ayodo
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He groaned and trembled in pain as a burly doctor forcibly extracted his six teeh in the most barbaric fashion. A shark-faced colonial District Commissioner paced the tiny operation room to ensure he did not escape the punishment.
An African medic, barked at the hapless 16-year-old boy as he pulled out the tooth and placed them on a surgical plate. He had not applied an anaesthesia because that was the preserve of the white men and a few loyal Africans.
Today, 57 years later, Thomas Magero Oluk shudders as he narrates his ordeal.
“The pain was unbearable. I never imagined that I would be alive after the sixth tooth were extracted without anesthesia. I bled profusely,” Oluk says.
He says even traditional experts who extracted the six sets of lower teeth of Luos during the old days used herbs as anesthesia.
Last week, an angry Oluk said he is planning sue the British Government to compensate him and return his set of six lower teeth forcibly extracted at the orders of then Kitale DC, Mr Roe Wilson at the Kitale District hospital as a way of punishing him in 1953. “I want my teeth back,” he told The Standard.
Public Works
He adds: “The doctor used a pair of pliers. I cried my heart out and bled profusely as the DC smiled,” says Oluk, now 80.
The polygamist father of 12 was working for the Ministry of Public Works in Lodwar when the tragedy happened. He was admitted to Kitale hospital for 40 days and eventually lost his job.
According to Oluk, the colonial administrator ordered his teeth removed to prove that he was a Luo and not a Mau Mau freedom fighter (Luos used to remove six lower teeth as a rite of passage to adulthood).
“My crime was that I had given water to the Kapenguria Six — including Mzee Jomo Kenyatta who were detained in Lodwar.
Others were Bildad Kaggia, Kung’u Karumba, Fred Kubai, Paul Ngei and Achieng’ Oneko.
The nationalists were all arrested in 1952 at the height of the struggle for independence.
“The Mzungu was mad. He accused me of being a Kikuyu rebel. When I told him I was a Luo, he ordered that my teeth be removed like other Luos,” says Oluk.
He adds: “I was depressed after losing my teeth because it was against my Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) church doctrine,” he says.
The forced extraction of his teeth has been attracting visitors to his home at Kabondo, in Rachuonyo South.
“Historians and researchers have come to interview me,” he told The Standard in an interview at his home last week.
Oluk says he used to secretly give bottles of water to the Kapenguria six to share as they dug roads in November 1952.
He says the freedom fighters were subjected to harsh conditions and he decided to help them.
“My luck ran out one day when a prison warder caught me giving Kenyatta a bottle of cold water. He reported me to the DC who ordered me arrested and transferred to Kitale for punishment,” Oluk says.
Lower Teeth
He adds: “I was detained for three months. My father appealed to the DC to release me saying I was not a Mau Mau but he could not be convinced as I had my six lower teeth intact.”
It was after he was sacked that he escaped to Kampala in fear of being re-arrested. Former Planning Minister the late Tom Mboya convinced him to return home.
“Mboya helped me get house No. Y19 in Kaloleni in Nairobi while he lived in Ziwani,” Oluk remembers.
It was in Oluk’s house where Mboya met and rallied youths as he organised pro-independence meetings at Kaloleni Social Hall.
“My wife used to cook food for the youths.”
In 1955, Oluk got a job as a driver with the Kenya Breweries and used the opportunity to supply weapons to the Mau Mau fighters.
“I used to supply beer across the country and used the privilege to reach the fighters. They all knew me.”
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