By James Okoth
In the quiet, little-known village of Wathorego, in Kisumu East, Kisumu County, dawn has always followed a rhythm older than memory. At 4 a.m. the call to prayer from a nearby mosque rises softly through the mist. Moments later, the hum of the first plane cuts across the silence. A predictable sound that villagers use to mark the hours. Children, as young as three, know their mornings, mid-mornings and evenings by the aircraft passing overhead. Time, in Wathorego, lives in the sky.
But on the morning of October 15, 2025, something changed. The planes came early, low, loud, unsettled. One tore through the clouds before the first call to prayer; another followed, its roar deeper, longer, and strangely mournful. By sunrise, the village already sensed that the skies were trying to say something.
Then the radios spoke the unthinkable: Raila Amollo Odinga, the enigma, the reformer, the man whose name had long defined Kenya’s democratic heartbeat, was gone. With him, even the air above Wathorego lost its calm.
In Nairobi, the nation’s grief gathered at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. Engineers and pilots of Kenya Airways prepared what would soon become a flight of history and symbolism — the return of Raila Odinga’s remains from India.
The carrier made a moving announcement that stunned millions.
“KQ203 will change to RAO001 as soon as we reach Kenyan airspace at around 8:50 a.m. to honour and respect our departed leader.” Kenya Airways announced.
It was the first time in Kenya’s aviation history that a commercial flight had been renamed to honour an individual. As the plane, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, approached from Mumbai, tens of thousands tracked it live online. The call sign RAO001 glowed red across global flight maps, its progress watched in real time by Kenyans at home and abroad. It’s path glowed red across radar maps, a single dot, carrying a nation’s grief.
At 8:52 a.m. as the aircraft crossed into Kenyan airspace, air-traffic controllers cleared a silent corridor. The hum of other planes ceased. For a few solemn minutes, the entire sky seemed to belong to Raila.
The days that followed saw Kenya Airways make another extraordinary gesture. With thousands planning to travel to Kisumu for the funeral, the airline increased its flight frequencies and upgraded equipment on the busy Nairobi–Kisumu route.
“We’ve increased our flight frequency to Kisumu over the weekend to meet the high travel demand.” Kenya Airways made the announcement.
Additional flights included:
Friday 17 October – KQ656 (13:30) and KQ658 (19:00)
Saturday 18 October – KQ650 (06:50) and KQ654 (08:05), both upgraded to larger Boeing 737s
Sunday 19 October – KQ654 (08:05) and KQ671 (19:00), also operated with Boeing 737s
Within hours of the announcement, nearly all flights were sold out. Ticket prices doubled from the usual KSh 8,000–10,000 to between KSh 18,000 and 23,000, as Kenyans scrambled to be part of history. Exact figures for ticket sales were not released, but industry reports confirmed that most flights ran at full capacity.
From the skies, the Nairobi–Kisumu corridor looked like a procession — a continuous string of red-blinking lights over the Rift Valley, each one carrying mourners, journalists or dignitaries heading home to say goodbye.
By October 19, the village of Wathorego no longer needed clocks.
The hum of aircraft had turned from rhythm to requiem. Military choppers hovered low, their rotors trembling the sugarcane leaves, almost sweeping away tens of hundreds of tired roofs. Media drones buzzed like restless insects. Jets roared in formation, some circling before diving toward Kisumu International Airport, others veering toward Bondo.
Children who once squealed with delight now stood silent, hands shielding their faces from the sun. Each sound was a reminder that the sky above them was hosting a funeral far greater than their small world could contain.
One afternoon, silence returned. The final chopper carrying Raila’s body home to Bondo disappeared into the western horizon.
The sky, at last, rested.
Days later, the old order resumed. The muezzin’s 4 a.m. prayer echoed again. The planes returned to schedule…the gentle 6:20 am, the sharp 8:40am and the evening hum. Children once more counted planes, whispering, “That’s the morning one… that’s the afternoon one.”
Though sky life is progressively returning to rhythm, every plane that passes still seems to say his name softly and endlessly as the roads to and from his Bondo home continue to surge.
This, however, is a story of another day!
