Survivor of Dusit attack avoids painful memories

For a year, Brian Kuira (pictured), a survivor of last year’s Al Shabaab attack at the dusitD2 Hotel Complex in Nairobi, has largely shielded himself from the traumatic reminders of the raid.

“Trying to keep it away from your memory is the best way to cope with it,” Kuira poignantly tells The Standard in an interview at his office in Nairobi. 

Since the attack, Kuira says he has had just one major flashback moment when he returned to the complex for the first time after his rescue last December to meet with a client.

“I had a meeting I could not miss. During the cab ride to Dusit, I recalled everything that happened,” he narrates. 

On the day of the terror attack, Kuira had spent the better part of his day in a meeting room at the hotel, holding strategy discussions with his colleagues and a client. As Kuira recalls, they were bound to stay at Dusit for long as the agenda of the meeting had to be completed that day.

“We went down to eat at 2 pm and went back for the afternoon session. We went back up and at 3 pm we heard the first blast. We thought it’s the normal explosion of Kenya Power transformers, so we didn’t think much of it. We looked out the window and saw people running out towards the gate,” Kuira recalls of the initial moments as the attack unfolded before any of the around 15 people in the room knew what was happening.

“We heard the second blast. By then some of my colleagues had left the room. I don’t know where they went. We looked outside the window again and saw people running down. Then we heard gunshots and that’s when we realised something was wrong,” he continues. 

Kuira says their first instinct was to get to safety.

“One of the guys at the meeting had a room at the hotel. We didn’t think it was safe to go outside because people were running frantically. I called two of my colleagues and they were already at the Westlands roundabout. Six of us went upstairs into the room and each of us found a hiding spot. Two hid in the bathroom, one behind a curtain, one behind the bed, I was under the table but directly facing the door and another in the room,” he recounts.  

Tense wait

For nearly five hours, the six unnervingly but patiently waited inside the room, aware that they could die if they left the room since all they could hear were gunshots, both inside and outside the building. Kuira describes the moment as frightening.

Peeping out of the window, Kuira and his colleagues could clearly see armed personnel and civilians responding to the attack.

Kuira was one of the first victims to speak out, even as the attack unveiled.

“We’re stuck at dusit, gunshots everywhere,” he tweeted at 3.31pm, as the ambush by Al-Shabaab went on.

After that tweet, and finding out from social media that the Dusit complex was under attack by Al Shabaab, Kuira says, he kept away from social media, instead keeping in touch with his friends via text.

“I texted a friend who works at the American Embassy. He knew which room we were in. We were told to stay in they will find us,” he says. Keeping in touch with his friends calmed him, he says, since it gave him the assurance that he was not alone and there were people on the outside working to have him rescued.

As they waited, Kuira and his colleagues continued to hear loud bangs and shots inside the hotel. Occasionally, Kuira says, there were huge lapses of silence, after which the bangs and shots resumed.

“The Recce guys came to rescue us at 8pm. Since they didn’t have key cards to access the rooms, they were blowing the doors,” he says.  

Finally, the Recce squad reached the room Kuira and his colleagues were hidden in, what he describes as the scariest moment of the ordeal for him. Even then, Kuira was unsure whether they were terrorists who had come to kill them or the security forces that had come to their rescue.

He narrates: “The door blew open; it was so loud. When I looked up, I saw three guns pointed at me, and the officers were shouting and commanding me to keep my hands up. I had my laptop bag next to me on the floor but I couldn’t pick it up. I tried but they shouted and told me to keep up my hands, because they didn’t know who was who at that moment.”

The officers rescued Kuira and four of his colleagues, leaving behind one who had barricaded himself under the bed. He would be rescued moments later.

Kuira describes the walk down the stairs from their sixth-floor room as a daunting walk down a trail of destruction, tiptoeing on shattered glass.

However, the officers who rescued them gave them much needed hope and reassurance. At the time, Kuira reveals, Al Shabaab terrorists had confined themselves in the hotel, exchanging fire with Kenyan forces.

Vulnerable

“When we got to the first floor, they told us to wait for them to clear the floor.  We stayed there for three minutes, hearing shots as they cleared the floor,” Kuira says, describing a feeling of vulnerability that came over him, feeling like they were open targets. At that moment, he says, he wondered why the officers rescued them before clearing all the floors.

When they reached down, the Recce squad searched and directed them into the lobby, as snipers cleared the premises.

They sat on the floor of the lobby for about 20 minutes, until an armoured car came for them, safely taking them out of the complex. After the rescue, he went back to the office, taking time to recollect himself before going home.

The immediate aftermath of the attack took an immense toll on Kuira. He recollects being unable to sleep for the first two nights, any slight sound startled him.

But since then, he says, the recovery has been easier. A week later, Kuira and his colleagues got back all the items they had left at the hotel, resumed work and life as normal, putting the tragedy behind them. Months after the attack, Kuira recalls feeling slightly nervous on the cab ride to the complex, as memories of the attack rushed in, but he strangely felt safe once inside.

One year later, Kuira says he remains eternally grateful to the Kenyan forces who swooped into Dusit, putting their lives on the line to save those trapped.