Dr Ofweneke’s life’s troubles began when he was a week old, in 1991.
“I do not know what happened between my parents but my mother left when I was a week old,” he says. “And they were very young. My dad was 23. They were living in Mathare, Kwa Chief.
“My dad took me to my grandmother’s place in Mbotela. We moved to Huruma, Dandora – all these ghettos.”
It was a tough life, one that would set the stage for his evolution into a strong-willed person.
At some point when he was in high school, back in Nairobi by then, he decided to look for his biological mother, behind his father’s back.
An aunt and an uncle who had an idea of where she could be traced her to Industrial Area, where she was working for the police.
“I am not very emotional, but when she saw me, she hugged me while crying for 30 minutes,” he says. He was not sure how to react, but his curiosity was sated.
She would spend the rest of her life, which was about four or five years, trying to make it up to him for the lost years.
His biggest regret is failing to forgive her when she asked him to on her death bed at Kenyatta National Hospital, after losing her battle with HIV-related illnesses.
“I still have that image of her in my mind, lying on that bed, struggling to get that statement out to ask for forgiveness. I was still mad. I did not know that she was literally in the last stages of her life. I just told her I would see her tomorrow. I did not know ‘tomorrow’ would be in heaven.’ She died about four hours after I left,” he says.
The experience taught him an unforgettable lesson against grudges, one that he teaches people whenever the opportunity arises.
