At 136 Years, Kenyan Family Believes Kin is World’s Oldest Man Alive

A Kenyan family from Nyeri County has asked for help from well-wishers to conduct a DNA test on their kin, whom they believe is the world’s oldest man alive.

The family of Julius Wanyondu Gatonga wants to confirm whether the man is 136 years old as indicated on his national identity card, which would make him enter the Guinness Book of World Records.

If confirmed to be true, Wanyondu will be 19 years older than the current holder of the record, Kane Tanaka of Japan.

Tanaka, who was born on January 2nd, 1903, clocked 117 this year, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. She was confirmed as the oldest person alive last March.

“As you know, during those colonial days birth dates were not recorded. So going by the ancient stories he has been telling us, he could be even older than the dates on his ID,” Wanyondu’s 76-year-old son, Jackson Gatonga told People Daily.

Wanyondu, a resident of Weru village, Mukurwe-ini Sub-county, says he belongs to the “Rika ria thimu” (Telephone age), a group that was circumcised in 1908 when the telephone network was being connected in Nairobi.

This means he was circumcised at the age of 24 if the date of birth indicated on his ID is anything to go by.

Wanyondu had two children, a boy and a girl, with his first wife. The boy, who was the firstborn, died at an early age while the girl, now an old woman, is married in Kirinyaga County. 

His second wife bore him eight children, and five including his son Gatonga who was born in 1944, are still alive.

In his youth, the patriarch, who has over 150 descendants, worked as a houseboy for an Indian family in Nairobi earning Sh3 monthly before joining the East African Railways and later returning home to farm. 

He vividly recalls the First World War (WW1 1914-1918), the Second World War (WW2 1939-1945), and the Mau Mau war for independence.

Wanyondu is in good health apart from some hearing problems and a stomach ailment for which he underwent surgery.

He takes traditional foods and advises the youths to stop consuming alcohol and smoking if they want to live long.

“He has never had any quarrel with anyone, neither have I heard him being accused of dishonesty. He has educated us to the highest level we could individually attain,” Gatonga said of his father.