Uhuru Kenyatta Uhuru is the son of Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya's founding father and the first president of the republic of Kenya (in office 1964–1978), with his fourth wife, Mama Ngina Kenyatta. His family hails from the Kikuyu, a Bantu ethnic group. His given name "Uhuru" is from the Swahili term for "freedom", and was given to him in anticipation of Kenya's upcoming independence. Uhuru attended St Mary's School in Nairobi. Between 1979 and 1980, he also briefly worked as a teller at the Kenya Commercial Bank. After St. Mary's school, Uhuru went on to study economics, political science and government at Amherst
Jomo Kenyatta Robeck became the District Officer, after which Kenyatta and the other inmates were treated more leniently. In April 1954, they had been joined by a captured Mau Mau commander, Waruhiu Itote; Kenyatta befriended him, and gave him English lessons. By 1957, the inmates had formed into two rival cliques, with Kenyatta and Itote on one side and the other KAU members—now calling themselves the "National Democratic Party"—on the other. In one incident, one of his rivals made an unsuccessful attempt to stab Kenyatta at breakfast. Kenyatta's health had deteriorated in prison; manacles had caused problems for his feet and he