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Kenya: Long-Serving Magistrate Takes 'Christmas Gift' in Her Stride
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The Nation (Nairobi)
21 January 2008
Posted to the web 21 January 2008
Bob Odalo
Nairobi
She had just arrived in Nakuru Town three days to Christmas and was ready to join her husband and two children for the festivities.
But a phone call from Nairobi instructing her to report to the Chief Justice's office on the eve of Christmas made her restless.
For Mrs Hellen Omondi the call left her guessing.
She was a member of the Auctioneers Licensing Board which had just held its last meeting of the year before she retired to Nakuru. In her thinking Mrs Omondi thought that maybe the Chief Justice wanted an urgent brief on what had transpired during the meeting.
Come Sunday December 23 and she took a matatu from Nakuru to Nairobi to be on time for the Monday engagement. She carried with her the Auctioneer Board meeting files.
By 8 am sharp Mrs Omondi was already at the Chief Justice's office and announced her presence to the secretary.
"Sorry, but you will have to see the Registrar of the High Court. She has a message for you," came the reply from the secretary.
Shock of her life
For a few seconds Mrs Omondi was at a loss on what was happening. She urgently marched to the registrar's office and it was there that she got the shock of her life.
"If you have come with your gown put it on. You are going to be sworn in as a High Court Judge," came the bombshell from the registrar.
"I was shocked and lost for words. I asked the registrar why they did not prepare me in advance. I was dumbfounded. It was one of those moment you think you are dreaming," Mrs Omondi told the Nation in an interview last Friday.
She afterwards called her husband in Nakuru to tell him the news but he too doubted her.
"I remember him telling me as we talked on phone that April Fools Day comes once in a year, on April 1 but not December 24th," she said adding "I understood why he said so because when I left Nakuru for Nairobi my being appointed a High Court Judge never featured at all."
Firm, efficient, fearless, tough and down to earth! Those were the fitting adjectives that described Lady Justice Omondi who, at 46 years of age, is arguably one of the youngest High Court judges, when she attended a farewell party hosted for her by members of the Machakos branch of the Law Society of Kenya on Friday at the Garden hotel.
The branch chairman, Mr Larry Wambua, said Mrs Omondi deserved the appointment. "You were God-send.
You were posted to Machakos at a time when practice in the courts both for the litigant and the practitioner was very chaotic. There was disharmony all around and disunity was the order of the day but you turned all that positively to the benefit of all," Mr Wambua said.
Lady Justice Omondi admitted that she came to Machakos as a chief magistrate at a time when the relationship between the Government, the Judiciary and the bar was at its lowest ebb.
The relationship was made worse by the strike involving magistrates.
She said when she took her Machakos office nothing was moving.
The strike, she said, had a big effect on operations of the courts.
"Eight magistrates were removed from the station, but the government brought in only five to replace them. There was problem," she said adding, "I would come to the office and while away the day filling crosswords, you see capital remand prisoners were not being brought to court while civil cases were piling up nothing was moving. After two weeks of boredom I said enough was enough and decided to act".
She employed an approach she called 'shared wisdom' where she brought all the stakeholders involved in the dispensation of justice and within time she identified the problem and set things in motion to the satisfaction of all and sundry.
In the three years she served in Machakos, Lady Justice Omondi commuted daily from Nairobi choosing to travel by matatus every morning.
She kept time and was always in the town by 8 am.
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"We would always find her in office by 8 am or earlier. Sometimes we thought she was a resident in the town," said lawyer Phillip Mulwa during the luncheon.
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