Kenyan celebrated author, now late Dr. Margaret Ogola, an award-winning author, medical doctor, and human rights advocate has been honored by Google in celebration of the late author’s achievement.
Dr. Margaret doodle appeared on Google’s homepage in Kenya on the day it would have coincided with what would have been the late author’s 60th birthday.
Dr. Ogola is popular for her novel, The River and the Source, which was a set book in KCSE from 1999 to 2004. In 1995, the novel won her Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature and Commonwealth Writers’ Prize best first book in the Africa Region the same year.
The River and the Source follow four generations of Kenyan women in a rapidly changing country and society. The book has been transcribed into Italian, Lithuanian and Spanish. It is one of the four publications credited to the author.
Dorothy Ooko, head of communications and public affairs, SSA said, “Local doodles create a way for Google to connect with Kenyans about what’s crucial to them and to help celebrate endearing moments. We celebrated Wangari Maathai and today we’re celebrating a literary figure, Dr. Margaret Ogola.”
Dr. Ogola was popular but not only known for writing. She was the Medical Director of Cottolengo Hospice for HIV & Aids orphans from 1994. It is a role that earned her the Families Award for Humanitarian Service of the World Congress of Families in 1999 in Geneva, Switzerland.
She was also a pediatrician at the Health and Family Life Programme at the Kenya Episcopal Conference and the Kenyatta National Hospital and headed the Family Life Counselling Association of Kenya (FLACK). The former entailed supervising the affairs of over 430 health facilities run by the Catholic Church in Kenya.
As part of the commemoration, a special reading of her book The River and the Source will be held at Prestige Bookshop, Mama Ngina Street later in the week. The readings will be led by her family and other Kenyan authors.
