President Kenyatta has Missed Going Out with Friends and Having a Good Laugh

To become President is to become powerful. But a presidency may not be completely enjoyable as President Uhuru Kenyatta admitted on Friday.

In an interview with Citizen TV, Mr Kenyatta said he misses the social life he had before he came to power three months ago.

The busy schedule, the guards and the trailing by security agents wherever he goes have cut him off his friends.

“That (social life) is something I am missing. It is not the same as it used to be a few months ago. That, I definitely miss.”

Sticking to the job

“I miss out on my social life. I miss out when we go to the public gatherings, being able to mingle and mix with people. You know, sometimes you see friends, but by the time you want to extend your hand to them, you are restrained.”

But the President defended his security guards for sticking to their job even as it restrains him.

“They are not doing it to hurt me or stop me so it would be wrong for me not to listen to their advice.”

“I still have my friends, I still want to maintain my friends, but at the same time, I am President and I have to just know how to balance the two.”

Mr Kenyatta currently uses State House only as an “office” and stays at his home, which, incidentally, is a stone’s throw away from State House in Nairobi.

“We are developing an environment that is a lot more open and relaxed so I’m not going to say there has been much change. It’s pretty much the same, my kids are going to the same schools and still living at home and get visited by their friends,” he told the station at State House after hosting the Editors Guild.

Uhuru, who was born just two years before independence, was raised at State House when his father, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, was President.

And there is a rumour that he broke a ‘window’ when playing sticks at home.

On Friday, he promised to “fix” the window his father and two other former presidents, Daniel Moi and Mwai Kibaki, failed to repair.

Media freedom

“I will fix it before the next occupant comes in,” he joked. Nobody knows whether the ‘window’ is figurative or real.

The President and his deputy William Ruto assured editors of continued media freedom and ease of accessing to information from his government.

In their first 90 days in office, Mr Kenyatta argued he had already delivered on some of the pledges he made during the campaigns.

“As far as I’m concerned, I know we have done very well. We have had to go through a very long and arduous process as mandated by our Constitution to put a government in place that took us a little of time.

“But we have managed to put in place a government that is inclusive and made of experts, who, we believe, will deliver. We have also established the free maternal healthcare, another key promise to Kenyans.”

His government has also promised laptops for class one pupils next year.

- Saturday Nation

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