Why Raila Odinga's mausoleum has five sides
The pentagon at the family home in Bondo recalls the raised fist that became his signature, and the five-member team that carried his 2007 campaign.
Bondo — The mausoleum built for Raila Odinga, Kenya's late former prime minister, at his family home in Bondo is a pentagon, and each of its five sides was chosen deliberately, Capital FM reports.
Samson Malaki, a Kenya Defence Forces officer who explained the design, said the five sides stand for the five fingers of the raised fist that Odinga made his trademark at rallies. In Malaki's account, the gesture was a call to unity and not one of defiance.
President William Ruto attended the handover of the completed building at Kang'o ka Jaramogi, the Odinga homestead in western Kenya.
Father and son
The shape also answers the building beside it. Odinga's father, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Kenya's first vice-president, lies in a six-sided mausoleum on the same grounds. The designers wanted the two structures to sit in harmony.
The Pentagon
The number carries a political memory as well. In the run-up to the 2007 election, five senior figures in the Orange Democratic Movement who had sought the party's presidential nomination became known as the Pentagon. Odinga won the ticket and the others campaigned for him in a contest whose disputed result led to Kenya's worst political violence since independence.
This report is based on reporting by Capital FM, via AllAfrica.
