•Nyatome carried out his responsibilities with a verve that was quite infectious and vivid for all those who interacted with him.
•For five decades, he dedicated his life to a sport in which he served in several positions including race starter, Athletics Kenya (AK) PRO, museum curator and team manager on various occasions.
Image: HANDOUT
Francis Orangi Nyatome was a walking encyclopedia who had the A to Z of athletics at his fingertips.
Nyatome, whose life was centred around athletics, was the go-to guy on matters of Kenyan athletics and his photographic memory combined with his knowledge of different statistics concerning the sport qualified him to be a walking librarian/museum/encyclopedia of sorts.
For five decades, he dedicated his life to a sport in which he served in several positions including race starter, Athletics Kenya (AK) public relations officer (PRO), museum curator and team manager on various occasions.
It is not an obligation he merely fulfilled for the financial returns it gave to him but for the passion for athletics, which burned furiously inside of him.
Nyatome carried out his responsibilities with a verve that was quite infectious and vivid for all those who interacted with him. Born in 1938, Nyatome was a sportsman per excellence.
The firstborn son of Mzee Nehemiah Nyatome Mogusu and Bathsheba Ochari Nyatome, leadership was a quality that came naturally to him as he led the way for his other 11 siblings in matters of sports.
He and his seven other brothers were footballers who were so talented that they would walk straight into the starting 11 of their local side in Nyaribari Chache.
Later, he veered off into athletics, specialising in the 400m, where he enjoyed considerable success at Riondong’a Elementary School, which he joined in 1951 before sitting for his intermediate KAPE Examination in 1957.
He did his higher education at Iterio before he was taken to Uganda under the Lutheran Church to train as a P3 teacher and later on to Siriba, where he trained as a P2 teacher.
After completing his course as a P2 teacher he was posted to Nyanchwa Intermediate School. After a brief hiatus from sports, he went to India to study aeronautical engineering at Central Training Institute for Instructors but his love for the game never waned.
Upon his return to Kenya in 1976, he found employment at East Africa Airlines (later Kenya Airways), where his path crossed with other like-minded people with a love for the sport.
These connections would come in handy for him when he decided to immerse himself fully in athletics upon his retirement from Kenya Airways in 1993.
He then joined the English printing press in Nairobi shortly after before finally returning to his ‘first love’ which was Kenyan athletics. Considering libraries are repositories of information, where people harvest knowledge, the walking encyclopedia did just that by enlightening those with who he brushed shoulders.
He was a light— as far as Kenyan athletics is concerned— to many who were empowered in various roles, such as race starters.
His light radiated beyond Kenyan borders, such as in 2011 when he trained 14 technical officials of the Seychelles Athletics Federation (SAF) – as a lecturer from the then International Athletics Association Federation (IAAF).
In his capacity as team manager, he steered Team Kenya to success at the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, where we finished with 16 medals (four gold, eight silver and four bronze).
Indeed, Nyatome has assumed an indelible place in the history of Kenyan athletics. His footprints on the sand of Kenyan sports will remain for many generations as a beacon for current and future stakeholders looking for a route to success in their different endeavours.
At AK, every day spent with Nyatome was an opportunity to learn and become better as human beings and sports stakeholders. His life left an impression on us and the lessons that come with it will long remain imprinted in our hearts and minds as we strive to grow the sport.
Flowery tributes would not do much justice to Nyatome but the greatest honour would be to embrace his ethos and use it to transform Kenyan athletics for the better.
Nyatome is survived by a widow, Milkah Bitonga, with who he had six kids – the late Irene Moraa Panther, Tom Robert Mikuro, Lorna Bonareri, Brian Onserio Nyatome, Edgar Oguoka and Paul Cornelius Mogusu. Rest in peace Legend.