Author's Note: This chapter is optional additional reading. It doesn't add anything to the story. It just gives some background on Hongo for those who are interested in who he is and where he comes from.
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Hongo Ochuka grew up in the Kenyan port city of Kisumu on Lake Victoria. In his youth, war stories of the Mau Mau Rebellion fascinated him. He played defense on his soccer team at Kisumu Boy’s High School. As a pedantic student and a disciplined soccer player, he earned respect from administrators and his teammates. His family steered him into military service soon after graduation. His Luo tribesmen hoped to populate Kenya’s somewhat newly independent military with members of their tribe. Ochuka quickly implemented his rigid work ethic and wound up leading a large mobile armoured maintenance group in the Kenyan Army.
On Sunday August 1st, 1982, disaster stuck as members of the Kenyan Air Force took over the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation and announced through the radio that they had taken over the government. Earlier that day, members of the coup had pressed a gun to the heads of a few pilots and ordered them to bomb the State House in Nairobi. The Kenyan State House acts similar to the American White House and traditionally houses the President. The pilots agreed on the ground, but in the air, they changed the plan and dropped the bombs in the forests surrounding Mount Kenya.
Ochuka received a call that morning as he prepared to attend church services in Nairobi. His colonel ordered him to round up twenty other men from the battalion stationed in the area and attack the KBC TV station. He executed the attack efficiently and ruthlessly, killing over a hundred former members of the Kenyan Air Force.
Although lauded for his efforts, the experience hardened and jaded him. He left the military a few years later to take up studies at the Mzizima University of Tanzania. Through his studies there he got involved with the Olduvai Gorge digsite. He eventually became the digsite director, managing the native staff and overseeing maintenance on the excavation equipment.
With fresh funding stemming from their big discovery, the Prices underwent a major expansion of the digsite’s workforce. They heard about Ochuka and his leadership skills through the grapevine and lured him over with a compensatory offer that he could not refuse.
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