Google Honors The Late Award-Winning Novelist Margaret Ogola

“In any case I have done anatomy, and beneath the skin everyone is remarkably the same. Even the blood, which is supposed to be thicker than water, is all just a combination of iron and protein in every instance. Some people are good. Others are bad—it has got very little to do with their blood or tribe. It’s all in the heart.” Margaret Ogolla, The River and The Source.

In what would have today been her 60^th birthday, Google has doodled the late novelist, pediatrician and human rights activist, Margaret Ogolla, leading not only Kenyans but the World in honoring her.

Margaret Ogolla, who died 8 years ago on September 12, 2011, was 53 years of age at the time of her demise and the medical director of Cottolengo Hospice, a hospice for HIV and AIDS orphans.

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Margaret attended Alliance Girls High School before proceeding to the University of Nairobi where she earned her first degree, a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery, in 1984 at a time when Kenya had a diminished number of doctors.

Margaret went on to pursue a Masters Degree in medicine at UON while working as a medical officer at Kenyatta National Hospital.

Margaret is remembered for her writing prowess exhibited in her novel The River and The Source.

The River and The Source was selected for literature reading in Secondary Schools across the Country and it was examined in National exams.

The River and The Source focuses on airing lives of women in Kenya across various generations from a traditional outlook to modern times. It delves further into crisis that held the nation captive at some point such as HIV/AIDS.

Google has celebrated Ogolla by doodling her image on the search engine.

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The River and The Source won the 1995 Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature and the 1995 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book.

“The inspiration for this book came from my mother, who handed down to me the wisdom and lives of her own mother and grandmother,” Ogolla noted in one of the awarding ceremonies.

Mandate of the people was Margaret’s last book before she met her death. May her soul continue to rest in peace.