Form Two girl’s poor performance makes her bolt from home

Wangari Murimi displays her daughter’s portrait at home. The Form Two student, Winnie Wairimu Murimi, has not been seen since May 7.  [Photo: Wainaina Ndungu/Standard]

Karatina, Kenya: Mystery surrounds the disappearance of a Form Two student who may have travelled more than 140km in search of a traditional doctor in the hope of reversing her poor grades.

The girl, Winnie Wairimu Murimi, aged 15, disappeared from her home in Shell Village of Karatina township on May 7, the day she was supposed to report back to school for the second term of the school year.

Her parents, Johnam Murimi, 52, and Josephine Wangari Murimi, 44, say their daughter is an obedient girl who was more comfortable at home than with strangers.

Karatina OCPD James Gwiyo said they were holding two suspects – a 17-year-old girl who helped connect the schoolgirl with the traditional healer and who cannot be named for legal reasons, and the healer, a Tanzanian known as Ibrahim Kilinki, aged 50.

Mr Gwiyo said police in Karatina took the two to court and were granted orders to hold them pending investigations into Winnie’s disappearance. But last Wednesday, they were set free and asked to report to the local CID offices weekly.

The missing girl’s parents say they were not surprised when their daughter, a student at Tumutumu Girls’ High School, said she was going to pick books from a friend at 7am on May 7.

“I didn’t question her because I thought she would be back soon as that was her routine,” said the distraught mother.

“When she had not returned by noon, I was sure there was something wrong and tried frantically to reach her on her brother’s mobile phone, which she had carried.”

Wangari says that morning, her daughter was as lively as always and had even asked to deliver the milk to a nearby collection point, which she did before returning swiftly for breakfast.

“She then got dressed and said that she would pick the books and then do her school shopping and be back in time to prepare to leave for school at 2pm to make it by the 4pm deadline,” explained her mother.

But Winnie never returned. The last time she answered her phone was 1pm when she promised to come back. She stopped picking calls after that.

Her father says he is concerned that his daughter was abducted. He reported the matter to Karatina Police Station at 4pm on the same day and set in motion attempts to trace the schoolgirl’s last phone calls with help from a mobile phone company.

Murimi says the phone signals traced his daughter to the Nairobi city centre’s Tea Room PSV terminal where matatus on the Nyeri route pick and drop passengers.

Since she had not picked Sh2,000 her mother had sent to a friend in Karatina town for her school shopping, Winnie’s parents at first had difficulty understanding how she had travelled to Nairobi.  But Mrs Murimi later said she discovered the daughter had taken Sh1,000 from home.

The Tanzanian healer allegedly confessed that the girl had gone to his ‘clinic’ seeking cleansing so she could get better grades. But said he had sent her away as she was unaccompanied by a parent.

The girl’s parents denied they had exerted undue pressure on their daughter over anything. But her brother, Josiah Gathuthi, 19, says Winnie was obviously under pressure to perform in school as her parents felt she was not fully exploiting her potential.