A mother of one of the victims of last month’s attack at a Mandera hotel has revealed why she secretly collected the body of her son from the mortuary and dumped it at her father’s home.
Speaking to The Nairobian, Mary Nyawira, the mother of Simon Mwangi who was killed alongside his uncle Amos Njogu by Al-Shabaab terrorists, said her father evicted them from his compound after a family feud.
Nyawira said her sisters have since 2011, when their mother died, been inciting their elderly father, Daniel Wang’ombe, to evict her because she is single and poor.
Her father refused her 34-year-old son to be buried in his compound and instead demanded Sh1.8million to ‘soften his heart’.
Undeterred, Nyawira secretly collected her son’s body from Nyeri County Referral Hospital mortuary, hired a hearse and dumped it in her father’s compound.
Her father threatened to buy petrol and burn it.
However, Nyawira alerted villagers attending the burial of Amos Njogu in a neighbouring village.
The villagers hurriedly interred Njogu’s body and rushed to Wang’ombe’s compound where a six-hour standoff ensued as the elderly, religious leaders and government officials tried in vain to convince him to let the burial take place.
“I was born and brought up here. I also bore all my children, one of whom died in 1994 and is buried in this land,” she said, adding that she has never had a confrontation with her father until her mother’s death in 2011.
“My brothers attacked me and convinced my father to chase me away with my children from the compound. He claimed he was not my father. I want him to tell me who my parents are since my mother is dead and I do not have anybody else to call my dad,” she said, tears rolling down her cheeks.
Contacted by The Nairobian, Mzee Wang’ombe explained that Nyawira, a mother of two, “should have come to me first and sought forgiveness before dumping the body in front of my eyes. I will never allow that body to be buried in my compound,” said Wang’ombe without give details about how his daughter had wronged him. “I will not accept that. Let her take the body and go with it,” he insisted.
Nyawira, however claims she has never wronged her parents, noting that when her mother was alive, she was given a portion of the family land to till. It is in the same land that Mwangi was hurriedly buried.
“I have been sidelined by my family; the same children we grew together with and my father. I pray to God that He gives me courage to soldier on...”
Angry villagers vowed to ensure that Mwangi is buried in the land, and area elders had a hard time securing the compound as senior government officials and church leaders engaged the old man.
At around 4pm, the villagers stormed the compound, dug a grave and buried Mwangi unceremoniously.
They also uprooted an abandoned one-roomed timber house which belonged to the deceased and placed it on top of the grave, claiming they were burying him like a king.
