Pastor Nellie Shani describes her life as a story of victory.
Her mother was a recognised medicinewoman or herbalist who would hear and hearken to the spirits that controlled her, most of her young and adult life.
Ironically, Agalo, for that was her name, believed that she had good or kindred spirits and that her sole aim in life was to help those who had bad spirits and sicknesses cast upon them by evil people.
However, in the beautiful tapestry of life that only the mighty hands of God can work, Nellie is now a globally recognised pastor specialising in teachings on spiritual warfare and deliverance, which she has taught and ministered in 20 countries all over the world, and in nearly all the continents. Pastor Nellie claims to follow the footsteps of Jesus who Went about doing good and healing all those oppressed by the devil according, [].
In all her youth and part adult years, Nellie knew her mother as one immersed in her spiritual trade. At one point, she disappeared and no single family member knew where she had gone, only for it later to emerge that she had been instructed by the spirits to visit a powerful medicine man in Tanzania who she was told would rid her of the evil spirits that oppressed her.
I came home from school and met my mother at the front door with a suitcase in hand. When I enquired where she was going she bade me silence and walked out of the gate, never to be seen again for many years, Pastor Nellie says, as we settle for an interview in her well-furnished home in Nairobi.
Agalo would be gone for eight years, leaving behind eight children (the last born only three years old) and a thoroughly flustered and lonely husband who never stopped looking for his missing wife.
Pastor Nellie says that even at this dark moment, God was working miracles in their family as she became born again at 11, joining three of her elder sisters who had already embraced the faith.
She adds that her father, veteran trade unionist, Raymond Odhuno, also saw the light and joined his children in Christianity.
At salvation, God told my father three things - that he keeps the faith, take care of his children in their mothers absence and that his wife (my mother) would come back again. In my mind, I thought my mum would return after a month. That month stretched to eight solid years before we would see her again! she says.
More about Agalo and her business later. For Nellie, knowing Christ at a tender age provided a well-needed anchor as she navigated life. Born in Nairobis Doonholm Estate, Nellie attended Kongoni Primary School in South C before heading to Loreto High School Limuru where she wrote her Form Four exams and later joined Kenya High School for A levels. She joined the University of Nairobi to study Graphic Design.
Upon graduation, she joined World Vision International where she met the man who would become her husband - Dan ole Shani. They celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary on Sunday, March 31, 2024. Their union was blessed with three children - Tetu, Silalei who was Kenya womens national basketball team captain for a number of years, and Lantei who served for five years in the US military.
The couple would soon relocate to Lusaka, Zambia where Nellie started a womens prayer fellowship. Her first case of seeing the manifestation of evil spirits was in a young girl who exhibited strange behaviour. Nellie prayed for her and she was healed.
It was also in Zambia that she saw first-hand a powerful demonstration of forgiveness.
There was this lady I came to know. Her husband ran off with another woman and the lady was forced to singlehandedly raise her children. Years later, the brother of the husband contacted the lady and said her runaway husband was sick to the point of death and that the woman she ran away with had abandoned him. The jilted wife, against bitter protestations from her now adult children, made the difficult decision to forgive her husband and take him back. That was true Christianity at work, Nellie says.
After Zambia, the Shanis next port of call was the desert country of Mauritania where Nellie immediately got down with the work of God.
Mauritania is an Islamic country but I also realised that the nationals of this country had a strange mixture of Islam and animism with a smattering of witchcraft, she says.
Nellie also came to learn of a particular estate in the capital Nouakchott, where prostitution thrived, serviced mainly by women from Nigeria, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Nellie, together with a group of ladies began an outreach programme preaching to these women. They helped those who abandoned the trade to start small businesses from which they earned an alternative living.
After Mauritania, Nellie and her husband moved to Senegal and she got a
