Survivor marries KDF rescuer and feels safer

Maureen Mayengo at her home in Lanet, Nakuru, on Thursday. Mayengo survived the Garissa University massacre by hiding in a wardrobe for more than 12 hours. [PHOTO: KIPSANG JOSEPH/STANDARD]

Maureen Mayengo considers Ivan Okello, the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) soldier she married four months after the Garissa University College massacre her “shield and defender”.

On the day of the attack, the 21-year-old student hid in a closet unaware that brave Okello was among the soldiers who had stormed the dormitory where the gunmen were holed up.

“I resolved to marry him after the attack,” said Mayengo who had met the 25-year-old soldier before the attack.

“I saw a shield and defender in him,” said the student, a refrain she picked up from the National Anthem, as if to symbolise their patriotism

But all this was before that traumatic day when the student from Kakamega County lost her friend to Al Shabaab, the terror group from Somalia that staged the attack.

“I could hear the attackers telling my friends female students were at liberty to leave the dormitory. But it was a different directive to female Muslim students to head to a nearby Mosque that made me change my mind,” Mayengo recalls of the incident in which Christians were targeted for execution.

All this is now behind Mayengo who lives in her husband’s home in Lanet. Okello has been deployed on a KDF military mission in Al Shabaab’s lair in Somalia.

Mayengo is still too traumatised from the Garissa incident — loud noises such moving vehicles or raised voices still scare her.

The student is eagerly waiting for her husband’s return from the Somalia mission and hopes they can solemnise their marriage with a grand wedding after she graduates.

This is what keeps her grounded. “I will never step into that place,” she swears in reference to the Garissa campus.

Mayengo, who has transferred to Moi University main campus in Eldoret, says she is lucky she has the strength to date. Most of her friends who lost their lovers in the attack have been unable to date since last April.

The desire for retribution for victims appears more widespread. Ruth Jeptoo Changole, another survivor of the attack, says she hopes to join the armed forces to defend the country against terror attacks.

The second year Bachelor of Education student from Baringo has urged the government to beef up security in all universities.

“Institutions of higher learning accommodate thousands of students. It is therefore a tragedy that police officers are deployed without proper gear,” said Jeptoo.

Faith Kipg’etich, Cleophas Lechem and Collins Loting, other survivors of the attack in which 148 people were killed, also transferred from the Garissa University College to Moi University’s main campus.