Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 1346050,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1346050/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 115,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Sifuna",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13599,
        "legal_name": "Sifuna Edwin Watenya",
        "slug": "sifuna-edwin-watenya"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Speaker, Sir, I say thank you to Sen. (Dr.) Khalwale for bringing this Statement and all my colleague Senators who have spoken about the late Lawrence Sifuna. On behalf of my entire family, I say thank you for also allowing colleagues to mourn this great gentleman. As Sen. (Dr.) Khalwale will bear me witness, there is a Luhya word for your mother’s brother, but there is not one for your father’s brother. We call them “our father”. That is why many people in the country naturally assumed that Lawrence Sifuna was my dad. In the family that my father comes from, there were five boys and my father follows the late Lawrence Sifuna. His public exploits are things that people can speak about the whole day. For us, we remember him for things that he taught us at a personal level. There is something he used to keep telling us all the time. The first one was that a good name is better than riches. In fact, we have a responsibility to put the reputation of the name that you bear before anything else. As somebody has spoken here, many of the Members of Parliament (MPs) who were elected in the 1970s and 1980s are not rich. He used to say this every time because sometimes we see some jokes and memes on social media where children are asking their parents, ‘when people were grabbing land on Mombasa Road when it was still a field, where were you?’ Not everybody is wired like that. The name ‘Sifuna’ was brought to the national and international prominence by Lawrence, and it has opened doors for many of us. Anybody who bears that name, including myself, has seen the benefit of having such a powerful and clean name. It has opened doors for me. I doubt that my path to leadership would have been as easy as it has been if I bore another name other than Sifuna. This is because everywhere you went in this Republic, the moment you mentioned the name, they would ask if you are related to Lawrence. He also used to tell us that it is only an open palm that receives things. In fact, if you receive things and you clench your fist all the time and do not want to share it with people, you are preventing other things from coming into that same hand. You need to be generous with the little that you have. He was generous; he would deny himself things. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and AudioServices, Senate."
}