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When Benson Gicharu’s father died, as a young man, he turned to boxing to make ends meet. His sister Olidah Wanjiku Njangiru shares how he played to change their life for the better.

Retired boxing champion, Benson Gicharu remains the only Kenyan boxer to have ever won medals in two different weight categories; flyweight where he won a silver medal at Delhi Commonwealth Games in 2010 as well as bantamweight bronze in Glasgow in the year 2014.

Yet when you meet him in person, his humble demeanour coupled with his diminutive stature won’t tell you of the legend that he is.

His family is proud of all his achievements, and to his last-born sister Olidah Wanjiku Njangiru, Gicharu is also a pillar of strength. 

“He took the role of my dad when our father died in 1998. He helped mum raise us.

As our ‘father’, he has provided for us financially and we go to him whenever we need advice,” she begins. 

Olidah is the last born of three siblings and the two have a six-year age gap. However, they have been close since childhood.

They grew up in Mukuru Fuata Nyayo slum in South B, Nairobi. Life became even harder when their father passed away. But his passion for boxing at a younger age kept him going.

As she recalls, Gicharu was only 13 years when he began boxing. “There was a boxing club near our home known as Queen of Peace, which Gicharu joined as a boy.

He played and won in many boxing tournamowever, he lost his first game in 1998, a month after our dad passed away.

His death took a toll on him affecting his performance. Similarly, he took the loss the hard way, but thanks to his coach, he was kept encouraging him to keep at it, something kept him on the course to winning,” says his sister. 

Playing to survive

Gicharu and his siblings attended St Catherine Primary School, Nairobi, a Catholic sponsored school, which provided everything they needed, even shoes. He would go to school during the day and train in the evening.

The challenge came when he completed his primary education as his mother who had was involved in a road accident in the year 2000 was not able to pay school fees in time.

At one point, he wanted to take up an apprenticeship source in mechanics instead of joining a secondary school.

But our mother insisted that he should wait untill she got money to take him to school.

During these two years, the 36-year-old engaged fully in boxing and trained with Kenya Prisons in the morning while in the evening he would go to Queen of Peace, the boxing club at home. 

Gicharu finally joined Devon Shah High school in 2002, Nairobi. An incident happened in 2003, that changed his mindset.

He found his mother in bed crying because she couldn’t afford to take care of the family. They had slept hungry.

This made him vow he was going to go into boxing not just as a game, but aim to earn money from it. 

At the age of 17, he changed from being a junior boxer to a senior one. He also studied hard to make his mother proud and all through, became the top student in class. In 2003, a boxing opportunity in Qatar came knocking. 

 “He played boxing in Qatar for seven months. But they wanted him to change his citizenship, something which didn’t auger well with Gicharu.

There were also conflicts when it came to his contract,” she reveals. Benson came back home to complete his studies in 2004.

Because of staying out for long without studying, learning became tough and instead, he focused more on boxing.

When he finished his secondary school in 2006, he joined the Kenya Police. There, he found great coaches who became his mentor and family.

In 2009, Gicharu joined the national team after defeating a heavy weight champion.

However, he lost several matches, which made others call for his demotion and replacement. But he pressed on. 

“The Kenya Police team was on his side because he had defeated other great opponents before,” narrates Olider.

His main issue was that he didn’t have much power when it came to fighting. The crisis forced him to look for McWilliams Arroyo, Puerto Rican professional boxer on Facebook, who guided him on what to do.

“There’s a dumb bell that he told Gicharu to buy, which weighed about three kilogrammes. He also instruted him to do a lot of push-ups,” she reveals.

Gicharu went for ‘Bingwa wa Mabingwa’ match in 2010, which he won. In the same year, he won over one of the best boxers in Mauritius, Victor Baktora and Uganda’s greatest Suleiman Bilali.

This gave him a lot of morale. After that, he went for Commonwealth games in New Delhi, India the same year where he won a silver medal. The last time a Kenyan won the silver was in 1996. 

“Even after winning, Gicharu remained the same humble guy. However, the awards gave him confidence to do more and play in bigger tournaments and win more medals,” she recalls.  

Ever determined 

The following year, Gicharu travelled to Pakistan where he won a silver medal.

In 2012, he travelled to Morocco for another match where he was the only person who qualified for London Olympics in 2013. 

In the same year, he had a World Championship match in Kazakstan and it was here that the International Boxing Association (AIBA ) liked how he played.

Therefore, he was selected amongst the eight boxers in the world to claim the AIBA professional boxing championship in 2014. 

The games began in 2015 and from what he was paid, Gicharu managed to build his mother a house in Juja.

In 2016, he went to a qualifier for Olympics in Venezuela after several unsuccessful trials in other qualifier events.

He calls this incident, the miracle in Venezuela. “He got a ticket two days before the match, and headed to the airport.

On arrival at the airport he presented his ticket and letter of invitation without the visa to immigration officials and wasn’t allowed to board the plane.

He pleaded saying the match was important to him as it would make him qualify for Olympics.

He was allowed into the plane, but warned that he could be deported if he went to Venezuela without a visa,” recalls his sister.

So, Gicharu miraculously managed to go to Venezuela. Word got round to the Minister of Sports in Venezuela that he didn’t have food or accommodation and he was catered for until the games ended.

He won the qualifier and when he came back, there was great celebrations at the airport. 

“I was in school at the time where I was boarding, and when school closed, my friends told me they saw him on TV.

I felt so proud of my big brother. I remember we would collect all the newspapers where he was featured and just read.

Seeing him that big made me work extra hard in my studies so as not to disappoint him,” she says.

Gicharu hanged his boots in 2017 and focused on building his art talent, something that he had placed on the shelf since he was young. 

“He spends his days coaching budding Kenya Police boxers as well as upcoming boxers in Mukuru slums where he started a boxing club. He also paints in the evening,” Olider says.

According to Olider, boxing pays. “Through boxing, my brother managed to move my family from the slum,” she says.