Pain of parents forced to bury their hopes with their children

Isaac Mutisya and his sister Milkah Kambua at Mwingi Level 4 Hospital mortuary where the body of his daughter Risper Mutindi Kasyoka lay. Risper, a victim of the Garissa terror attack, had been mistakenly buried at Itivanzou village at the home of Philomena Kasyoka, another victim. Risper’s body had to be exhumed for burial at her parents home. [PHOTO: FILE/STANDARD]

For Isaac Mutua Mutisya, the wound in his heart is still bleeding.

Mr Mutisya, a teacher at Itoleka Girls in Kitui County, had to wait for seven months before he could bury his last born daughter, long after other families had buried their kin and moved on.

Risper Mutindi Kasyoka was laid to rest on November 28 last year at her father’s Maluma village home.

“The episode is still fresh in my mind and has refused to go away,” Mutisya says.

The long wait was occasioned by a body mix up where Kasyoka’s body was buried at Itiva Nzou area in Mwingi region, after it was wrongly identified to be that of Philomena Kasyoka, another victim of the terror attack.

Mr Mutisya says the seven months search for his daughter, gallivanting from Chiromo mortuary to numerous government offices in Nairobi nearly sapped all his energy and finances.

As he moved from one media house to the other piling pressure on the government to produce his daughter, he recalls with a tinge of sadness how some government officials prevailed on him to go slow on his media assault.

He says the most traumatic part for the family, however, was the exhumation of Kasyoka’s body, six months after it had been buried and its subsequent preservation at Mwingi mortuary and eventual reburial.

“We suffered trauma twice because of government negligence,” Mutisya says of the ordeal.

The teacher says it is not possible to forgive the killers let alone forget, adding that even with the re-opening of the college and government assurances of security, danger still lurks.

“If I had another child selected to join Garissa University, I would rather take him to a village polytechnic. How is it safe now and it was not safe then, when students were killed from 5am to 2pm with no help from the authorities?” asks a bitter Mutisya.

What galls Mutisya further is the government’s silence on the matter. The government gave each of the bereaved families Sh100,000 to help in burial preparations but has since then gone mute. This disturbs him.

“We expect proper compensation. The government should compensate us voluntarily, they should not force us to go to court,” says Mutisya.

Duncan Mwendwa, a second year education student when the attackers visited death on Garissa University College, was the last born of four sons to Kalekye Mwandikwa from Katoteni village in Kitui County.

Described as polite and hardworking, Mwendwa, 22, was the only child to have gone through secondary school and later joined university.

His mother says he was the family’s beacon of hope. However, fate had other plans. On April 2, last year, Mwendwa was among a group of students mowed down by bullets when Al Shabaab terrorists struck Garissa University College and for hours on end, felled hapless students indiscriminately.

“I have never accepted that Mwendwa is no more. I cry whenever I remember the incident. The name Garissa evokes bad memories and I do not want to hear it being mentioned,” says the distraught mother.

Kalekye recalls how her body trembled before collapsing in a heap when a family friend relayed the sad news. She has certainly not moved on. “I will never forgive the killers,” she says. The mother describes as useless the re-opening of the campus recently. “Whom did they open it for? I can’t advise any parent to take their child there,” she says.

Ms Kalekye says no amount of money in compensation can fill the void in her life, but she expects the government to show concern for the bereaved families.

“The government has forgotten us. They have been silent as if nothing happened,” she adds.

With a token of Sh100,000 given for burial arrangements, Kalekye bought two cows and a donkey. With a heavy heart, she says those are the only reminder of her brilliant son who never lived to actualise his potential.