71-Year-Old Homeless Kenyan Timothy Majanja Dies in the US after 50-Year Stay in North America

A 71-year-old homeless Kenyan man has passed away in the United States after spending about 50 years in North America. 

Officials at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia confirmed that Timothy Majanja was admitted at the facility after being driven there in an ambulance and in critical condition. He however died after being put in a life support machine.

His relatives, who live in Lubao, Kakamega said they had received news of his demise and are making arrangements for his body to be flown back to Kenya for burial.

“We are devastated by the news and the elders here can’t fathom the idea of their son being buried in a foreign land, thousands of miles away from his ancestral home,” Protus Muhanji Shikoli, Majanja’s nephew told KNS Media via phone.

“We have been through a lot as a family….we wished we could see him alive but obviously. it was not meant to be,” he added.

Catherine Ogembo, Majanja’s niece who lives in the New Hope City, Minnesota said the hospital engaged police in tracing his kin before “they made the decision to just let him rest in peace.”

In 2014, NTV aired a story of the deceased, where he was appealing for help to return to Kenya after 46-year stay in North America. He told the media station that he wanted to return home after having had enough in the US.

Majanga traveled to Canada in 1968 then moved to Georgia, US in 1993, and has been living in squalor after losing his job in 1993. After his story was aired on NTV, Alphonce Shikoli, his elder brother, said the family was happy to learn that he was still alive.

“We eagerly await the return of our ‘prodigal son’. We are fattening a bull to slaughter upon his arrival,” said Shikoli at his rural home in Lupao Village, Kakamega County.

In the 2014 interview Majanja asked the Kenyan government through Ministry of Foreign Affairs to intervene and help him travel to Kenya, since he had lost his documents.

In 1973, Majanja was recruited into the prestigious Royal Canadian Mounted Police, where he served before venturing into politics.

He run for city representative in Calgary, Alberta, where he lost. He also unsuccessfully contested for a vacant mayoral seat. After moving to Atlanta, he worked for a transport company, but later lost the job.

“I lost my driver’s license and all the other documents which I had kept in a safe deposit at a local bank,” he said during the interview.

“I have no single document and can’t travel anywhere,” he said, adding, “I appeal to the Kenyan embassy to give me some travel documents so I can visit my relatives back home.”

He said he had married a Canadian woman with whom he got a son, but could not travel there to see them. “I married a Canadian lady and we had a son, but now I can’t even travel there to visit them,” he said at the time.