Blast survivors pay homage at memorial park

For Douglas Sidialo, American forces should have captured Osama bin Laden alive.

Mr Sidialo was blinded by the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi, which was executed by Osama’s al Qaeda terrorist group.

On Monday, he and other Kenyans whose friends and relatives died in the blast visited the August 7 Memorial Park in Nairobi, the ground on which the US embassy once stood.

Clutching a white walking stick, he knelt close to a huge plaque at the centre of the park engraved with names of victims, head bowed in prayer.

As he stood up, the palm of his right hand spread across a column of names, an up-and-down motion of his shoulders and heavy breathing betrayed the emotions boiling inside him. He was sobbing.

“This is a day of great honour to the survivors and victims of terrorism,” he later told reporters at the scene.

“It’s a day to remember those who died; a day to remember those whose lives were changed forever.”

But Mr Sidialo, who was driving to work when the bomb went off, was disappointed.

“It would have been better if he (Osama) was captured alive so that he could confess his sins to the whole world,” he said.

Mr Sidialo spent two months in a hospital as doctors tried to restore his eyesight. They failed, and discharged him.

Charles Kamau Muriuki and Mary Mwami were also among visitors to the memorial park. To Charles, 28, who lost his mother Mary Wanjiru Muriuki, justice had finally been done.

He had watched breaking news of the death as he ate breakfast in a city restaurant early on Monday. He did not believe it, he said.

He continued watching for an hour until US President Barack Obama’s speech, confirming that Osama had been killed, was aired.

He then left for the park to pay homage to his mother, who died when he was 15.

Mother’s death

He said that after his mother’s death, life became unbearable. His father could not handle it, so he took to drowning himself in alcohol, he added.

He sat KCPE exams later that year, but stayed home for a year to take care of their lastborn, then only eight months.

Although he joined a secondary school, he dropped out in Form Two. A similar fate would also find her younger sister. He runs a toilet-cleaning business.

Mary Mwami, who was working with the Teachers Service Commission in 1998, left a small bouquet of roses at the feet of the plaque.

She lost many friends working at the TSC. “Those who live by the sword also die by the sword,” she said.