Peter Habil Shicheyo Lukoy
- Announcement Date: February 4, 2024
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PETER LUKOYE: YOUR LEGACY AND SPIRIT LIVES ON 20 YEARS LATER
Peter Habil Shicheyo Lukoye, better known as Tamaa bin Tamaa Livingstone Amachina tt departed the world stage on 4 Feb 2004.
Mzee Tamaa was a man of many firsts. Best Actor at the Kenya National Theater in 1959. One of the first to rule Kenya's radio air waves in Gogo na Biscuti in the early 60s. The first Kenyan to act in more than 40 international films including: Born Free (1966); Living Free (1972); Born Free TV series (1974). Among the first Africans to perform when television was launched in Kenya in 1962 acting in: Korti ya Kiberenge; Jamii ya Mzee Pembe; Mzee Domo; Majuto ni Mjukuu; Kivunja Mbavu; and, from the 1980s, Vioja Mahakamani. His TV programmes were the precursors to modern day legal civic education and contained comedic dramatized moot courts where suspects albeit actors were prosecuted and tried based on the then Constitution of Kenya. As a funny man Mzee Tamaa mentored and inspired a generation of Kenyan comics and stage actors.
Mzee Tamaa was a consummate educationist sitting in various school boards and PTAs and Constituency Development Committees and together with his wife they educated numerous children at their Sinai Rescue Centre located in the Sinai informal settlements of Nairobi. A selfless man he was also deeply religious and was heavily involved in church activities and leadership. Twice when he impressed entertaining the sitting President he was asked to name whatever he wanted. In the first instant he asked for his church in Nairobi to be given a plot. In the second instant he asked for a school bordering his home upcountry to be connected to electricity. Both asks were granted.
He was a great leader of his Abashikutsi Clan and his Abachero people of Khwisero Constituency, Kakamega County. He was also a heavily involved in social programs at his adopted Matioli village home and in Nairobi at Jericho and the wider Makadara constituency communities. Mzee Tamaa’s influence and philanthropy touched many including the lives of complete strangers whom he helped in many ways using the social capital he had built over the years. Mzee Tamaa was a recipient of numerous awards contrasting from a Head of State Commendation to posthumously an inaugural Wasee wa Zamo Mtaani (WWZM) number one pick for inductee to their Hall of Fame.
Mzee Tamaa was also an accomplished photojournalist and columnist with many of his works published in Kenyan newspapers, magazines and internationally particularly for BBC and Deutsche Welle. Mzee Tamaa’s love for the pen was articulated mostly in the Kiswahili language. In his youth Mzee Tamaa was a prolific soccer player coming from a sporting family that has produced three Harambee Stars players two of them Kenya captains with other family excelling in rugby and netball. Mzee Tamaa also loved nature and animals. He died aged 72 years.
20 years on Lukoye is fondly remembered by his wife, children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, his relatives, and friends. A true Living-stone Mzee Tamaa is immortalized in his publications, films, and TV and radio programmes and in his deeds.