Victim was given only three months to live

A doctor gave her three months to live after that fateful morning. The pastor at her church told her she will use only one eye.

Julie Ogoye thought the man of God was mocking her but she trusted the doctor. Ten years on, she is alive and kicking.

Since then, she has been to Germany and United States. Looking back, she says the pastor was right.

“I met (retired) President Daniel Moi, former US secretary Madeleine Albright, ambassadors, and so many dignitaries. I just thank God that I am alive,” she says.

The night before the bomb exploded in Nairobi, Julie had a premonition. It came as a dream: she was walking in a graveyard, just wandering alone.

In the morning, Julie says, she woke up to find that it was just a dream, a nightmare.

She went to her office on the fourth floor of the Co-operative House. She laughed it off with a friend.

A few minutes later, she heard a loud bang. Her colleague said it was a grenade. Her friend moved close to the window.

“I decided to run downstairs to see what had happened,” she says. Little did she know that she had saved her life.

Then bang! The mother of all bombs went off. She remembers seeing a luminous cloud rising, then she fell down and she was covered in rubble.

“It was hot down there. Breathing was difficult and I could not scream for I was choking on the dust,” she recalls. “It was dark and hot. I thought the building was on fire. Luckily someone came and rescued me.”

Julie was rushed to Kenyatta National hospital. She was bleeding, but she recalls no pain. “I was numb.”

National hospital

As the bomb, detonated by members of the Kenyan cell of Al-Qaeda, sent shrapnel flying, they knocked out one of her eyes from its sockets –something which she did not know until she was being cleaned the following day at Kenyatta National Hospital. “When I was told, I passed out. I could not imagine it,” she says.

A year later, she went to Germany and had her right eye restored. The left eye that hag been gouged out was replaced by a prosthetic one. I did not realise, until she removed her spectacles.