Former State House Comptroller Eliud Mathu once disappeared while on a trip to the Mombasa with his boss former President Jomo Kenyatta.
After two days of searching, he was found in a small town of Ganjoni, Mombasa and was as high as a kite.
He sent back the search party with a message that he had had enough of State House.
Former Head of Civil Service Duncan Ndegwa wrote in his bio, Walking in Kenyatta Struggles: My Story that Mathu later sobered up and resumed his duties.
Since he was a very close friend of Kenyatta so he was accepted back and the matter died a natural death.
Mathu turned out to be an efficient comptroller but never became a power broker.
He kept away from sensitive matters and rejected Mzee's instructions to deliver messages.
A possible reason was that he was barred from also receiving Kenyatta's messages and letters.
One time Ndegwa clashed with Mathu over who should deliver mails to the president.
The letters became such a big issue that Mzee also clashed with John Michuki who served as the Secretary to the Cabinet.
Mzee directed that he should open mails himself but after finding out Michuki had open some, he flew into a rage.
Michuki defended himself by explaining, "Sir I would never wish the house of Michuki to be bestowed with the ignoble role of having led to the death of the first president of the Republic of Kenya after handing him an explosive device when I could have prevented it."
Indeed, this is how Ruth First, the radical South African who edited Oginga Odinga's autobiography, Not Yet Uhuru, met her death.
She opened a letter bomb addressed to her while in exile in Mozambique that had been sent by the apartheid spy agency, the Bureau of State Security (BOSS).