Former KBC broadcaster Leonard Mambo Mbotela’s daughter has penned a moving tribute to the late journalist. Idah Mbotela recounted her last moments with her father as she read her tribute at the All Saints’ Cathedral, Nairobi during her dad’s funeral service. When will Leonard Mbotla be buried? Friends, family and former colleagues of Leonard attended the service before his burial on Saturday, February 15. Idah noted her late father urged her to travel earlier to see him at Nairobi Hospital where he was receiving his treatment.
“I was truly a daddy’s girl I could hear you even when you didn’t speak. I planned to visit you on February 10, but you seemed to be urging me to travel earlier to come and say goodbye. Suddenly I decided to travel a week earlier and I arrived in Nairobi on Tuesday, February 4. If I had gone with my initial plan I would have missed the most precious time in my life which is to say goodbye to you,” she said. Idah’s final conversation with her father Leonard Mbotela at Nairobi Hospital Idah disclosed she did not receive positive news from family members as her father was not eating and that he was being fed intravenously.
He was also not talking but when he saw her, he smiled and called her name twice as he asked her questions. “You always cared for me and were concerned about me. Despite you not eating for several days somehow you drank all the soup I fed you. I will cherish this moment forever I fed you your last meal. After this, as the hospital staff were preparing you to sleep, you held my hand lightly and said to us who were at the hospital who were present and I couldn’t comprehend why you kept saying, “Nisameheeni”. Now I understand you were saying that I should forgive you because you were leaving me and I would never see you again on this earth.
Little did I know that I would be the last person you could speak to,” she added. Idah’s final remarks about her father Leonard Mbotela Idah noted her father’s health declined on the same night before he died the following morning, in front of his children. “There will be no words that can describe what a wonderful father you have been and as you lay on the hospital bed hospital bed, with my tears I kept saying to you numerous times how awesome and blessed I was to have been your daughter. I will miss you and I will love you forever dad rest in peace with the angels in heaven. Goodbye,” she signed out.
by John Green
