Chris Getonga: The ‘crazy’ half-Indian serial entrepreneur

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Chris Jitunga: the “crazy” half-Indian serial entrepreneur

Friday 05 May 2023

Malaria Eradication Council President Chris Gitunga during an interview at the Serena Hotel, Nairobi on May 3, 2023. Image | Ponce Bogeta | NMG

Chris Gitonga sounds like a popular 1960s radio host announcing the death of presidents. A deep and articulate baritone, his voice fills your bones.

“When a popular TV station was setting up shop several years ago, they asked me to be a news anchor, but I turned it down,” he jokes, “I didn’t have enough T-shirts.”

But what he didn’t turn down was an opportunity to start a business. Started, managed and sold Acacia Medical Center.

Then he started a mimosa pharmacy and sold it. Now it’s a Goodlife pharmacy. He now works for a frozen food manufacturing company called Sous Chefs while also chairing the board of End Malaria.

He is also the type to use the word “nearby” casually in conversation.

I read somewhere that you studied mathematics?

Yes. I did my first degree in financial mathematics in the US and then came back here and then went to England to do chartered accountancy.

I didn’t finish it because I wasn’t cut for it. I mean, I didn’t want to sit at a desk. Then my father died, and I was 26 years old.

My younger brother who was studying in England came back to get married, so I grew up quickly. There were ups and downs, and the ups were really ups and downs. But I had the support of my mom, she passed away last year.

How do you feel now when you see a Goodlife pharmacy store?

Pride. They are very professionally run, which is what I have always tried to do in all my business; Don’t cut corners, do things the right way, and buy from the right people.

They’ve grown tremendously since they bought the company. Mimosa Pharmacy started in Junction Mall Nairobi.

It was the first pharmacy of its kind in Kenya where you could walk into it like a supermarket and touch and feel the products.

Then we started opening branches in malls that were faster than we could open. (laughs) We did really well, seeing 1,000 customers a day.

Your initials were in health, but that’s not what I studied.

I wanted to be a doctor. My mother was a nurse and on weekends we went to the clinics where she worked.

When I mentioned that I wanted to be a doctor, she said, “No please, Chris, I know your character, you won’t be happy, and doctors don’t have a life.”

But when I returned from the States, when I retired, I opened a small pharmacy in downtown Nairobi, near River Road.

From that small pharmacy, she was able to educate her three children abroad. My father was a civil servant, but I think she made more money than him every month.

She was a very hardworking woman. Amazingly, everyone knows her. She was Indian, and the first Indian to marry a Kenyan, more than 60 years ago.

Are you half Indian?

Yes. Can you imagine?

Oh, I thought you were just a real light guy…

No, and I knew she was Indian when I was 12 years old.

What do you mean?

Because she was curling her hair. I assumed it was only mild. My father did his first law degree from Makerere University and then his second degree in India.

As you know, before independence some Kenyans went to India, some to the United States, and others to Russia. He was taken away by the Indian government because he was captured.

He was also a writer. While studying law in Delhi, he met my mother. She was a nurse. I always say she must have been a bit of a naughty girl to be with a black man in those days.

Wild. abnormal.

(chuckles) Yes, absolutely. Then he came back to Kenya because I think independence is near. He told her, “Let’s get married,” and she replied, “No, I don’t know if you had more than one wife in Africa… I don’t know Africa.”

She said, “If you want me and still love me, you write to me in one year, and I’ll come.” That’s what he did.

He wrote to her and came on board. He met her at the port. My father was the {district officer}, I think, in Muranga. He took her to Muranga and they married in Nyeri.

She gave birth and then we found out she was pregnant with my brother. She said, “Oh my God, now I can’t go back to India even if I wanted to.” (chuckles).

I mean, can you imagine her coming home with not one but two black kids? So she decided to raise her children as Kenyans.

This is all really cool. So how did you find out she was Indian?

When I was 12 years old, I fought at school. I went to Hill Hospital. This kid called me Chutara (mixed breed) and I just knew that wasn’t a good word. (He laughs)

So, of course, my dad came to pick me up from the principal’s office, and as we were going home he asked me what had happened. I said that David called me Shutara.

He said, “Yes, this is a person who is half Indian, half African. I asked, “Who is the Indian?” (Laughter) He said to himself, “He told your mother we need to have this discussion.” (Laughter).

So I went home and sat you down…

Yes. They told me the story. Of course, at that time there were a lot of children born from mixed marriages, mainly of African descent.

But it seemed at the time that they were huddled together. And my mother doesn’t want that. She wanted us to get into Kenya, which I think was very forward thinking.

Did she ever tell you what she had to go through to kind of understand?

Yes, many Asians coming to work knew her because she could speak dialects. She was Christian and Goa.

So I would say she had a lot of support from that community, and then my father’s family, from Nyeri, was also supportive of her.

They totally hugged it, and so far, we’re really close. We have very close-knit cousins ​​and all that.

What effect did this racial equation have on you, in your opinion?

I guess it made me never really think about it. (Silence) Only now that we’re talking about it does it occur to me to call me Indian.

It’s not something I think about, it’s just who I am. I don’t see it, some people may see it. My wife works for the United Nations but she is from Guyana, South America.

They consider themselves Caribbean because they speak English. I remember when I first went to New York with her, about 18 years ago to meet her family, her brother opened the door and the first thing he yelled over his shoulder was, “You didn’t tell me Chris was a Dougla,” which in Caribbean means someone who’s half Indian, half black.

They can see through skin or hair or something. So I asked her, “What is Dougla?”

She asked me, “What were you expecting? Would you expect (to be seen as) an African pre-conceived to imagine yourself? Walking in a big, orange cloth.”

to Mandingo?

Mandingo, yes. (chuckle).

Do you have any connection to your mother’s side of the family?

Yes. I have been to India about three times but most of my family have moved since then. Some went to England and others to Australia and Canada for economic reasons.

So I have cousins ​​in all of those countries. I talk to my cousin in Canada at least once every two weeks. He comes here with his family.

My family has never seen the ones in Australia. Hopefully next year or later this year we can go there to see them.

So a fellow half-Indian Kikuyu marries a Caribbean lady from Guyana, making your children’s legacy rich and interesting. Are they curious about their roots?

I have one child. only one daughter. She is 13 years old. Here, let me show you a picture. (Shows a picture of a girl baking in the kitchen.) My daughter is a good cook, and so is my wife. My daughter is very tall, very tall.

how old are you?

I am 61 years old.

I am looking for a good looking 61 year old man. You got your daughter very late in life; in 48?

Yes, too late. There were complications along the way, you know how it is with this stuff. We had a boy who lived two months and then died. He didn’t have enough oxygen.

God is his way. But then we now have Zuri and we love and cherish her. It is impossible to imagine life without it.

This is very frank. You lost your father very young, he must also have been young in his fifties?

Yes. He was about 56 years old. He had lupus but they didn’t know it at the time. Lupus is a degenerative disease. Things happened quickly.

My father was a quiet and decent man. He was then the city clerk in Nairobi, but we didn’t even have a piece of land, can you imagine? (He laughs)

His death made me grow up quickly, stand up for myself and also be a “dad” to my younger brother. I started Acacia Medical because of my father’s illness, and I wanted to set up a chronic disease center.

What drives you to all this work and what did you learn?

I don’t really know what drives me. This is madness. My wife sometimes thinks I’m crazy. (Laughs) Maybe I like a challenge. Maybe I’m crazy. (chuckle)

But what I learned is resilience. It and relationships. Take good care of them, no matter what. Answer all your calls. I only have one phone and one number that I’ve had since 1988.

My father always emphasized integrity, and that when you have that you can keep your head up and not look over your shoulder. He was a man of honour.

How do you lose your mother? This changes everything.

I would say she passed away at the age of 85. For the last two years she has lived with me, because my younger brother also died three years ago.

So I’m left with an older brother named Alfred. My brother’s death kind of shocked me because it was so close to him. I just fell silent. I asked her to come live with me.

It was good to have a home, and my wife, I say, was a good daughter-in-law. She lived a comfortable life, lacking for nothing, until the end when she had a heart attack.

But it can still be surprising to lose your mother, no matter how old she is. She had a good life. My father never saw his children marry or start families. So yeah, she had a good life.

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