Lucky survivors of Garissa University attack thank luck and good judgement

“If there was anyone who should have died, then I should have been the one,” Faith Nduku, a First Year student at Garissa University College said in a recent interview.

“I cannot run very fast. In fact, I don’t know how I ran so fast and made it to the fence and to the bridge.”

Faith is a lucky survivor of the attack in which 142 students and six security staff at the college were killed last month.

On the ill-fated morning of April 2, she was sound asleep when she heard a blood-curdling scream.

Her room was on the first floor, right next to the exit and the scream was coming from the floor below.

She and her roommates jumped out of bed and started to leave their room when the gunshots started ringing.

At the exit, they were joined by other students and all huddled together outside their hostel, hoping that the gunshots would stop.

However, the screams, the cries and the gunshots just got worse.

RAN BACK TO THEIR ROOMS

“Some girls ran back to their rooms to get their phones, and that is how some got caught and were gunned down,” Faith recalled.

She and some of her friends started running towards a field ringed by a fence. The gunshots persisted, this time, directed at them.

“Some were caught by the gunfire and dropped dead, others were shot but they could still run. Somehow, I escaped unscathed,” she said.

When they got to the fence, the lighter, more flexible ones were the first to scale the fence and jump over to safety.

Faith, however, just stood there, stranded and confused.

“I am a big bodied girl. I didn’t think I could climb up that fence. I thought about hiding in the bushes and trees around the fence, but I knew the terrorists would find me. I gave it my best shot”.

She waited until everyone had climbed over and when her turn came, she surprised herself and everyone else.

JUMPED OVER THE FENCE

She made it to the top and jumped over the fence. She was safe.

“It was adrenaline that energised me. Oh, and fear.

“There was no way I was going to remain behind. When I got to the top of the fence, I looked down and saw a lot of thorns.

“I just closed my eyes and jumped into the thorn bushes. And I didn’t feel anything,” she said.

By the time she made it across the fence, some of her friends had already left her and she was lagging behind.

Some went into a nearby police station and others into a military base not so far away from the school.

“People were naked. Some had their nightclothes on. I hadn’t changed from the previous day. I had a skirt and a blouse on and of course without shoes,” she said.

Her first stop was the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) airstrip because she thought it was much safer than the police station. She found several other students there.

KDF FIRST CHASED US AWAY

“At first, the KDF chased us away. They did not know what was going on until one of us explained.

“We were told to sit outside by the gate. Their leader told the soldiers guarding us to shoot if they saw any funny movement,” she said.
So they sat there in the cold for hours, some stark naked, as more students trickled in, crying and terrified. It was not until 8am that some soldiers went to update them about the situation on campus.
“At first they told us we would be back to school by 11am. But later on, some female soldiers came and what they told us really scared us,” she said. “They said ‘watu wamekufa wengi sana. Hii ni kama Westgate’ (A lot of people have died. This is just like Westgate).”
According to her, everything in Garissa came to a standstill when it became clear that the university was under attack. Shops and banks were closed. Transport services were paralysed. Everyone was advised to stay where they were and lock their doors. Meanwhile, the students sat under the scorching sun, praying for their friends, calling home to confirm their safety and some, borrowing clothes to hide their nudity.
Faith and the other students would stay at the military camp for another day.

They left on Saturday, the government arranged for their transport back to Nairobi.

It was such a relief to be finally reunited with friends and family, but to this day, her heart still bleeds for the many friends she lost in the attack.

WOKE UP AN HOUR EARLIER
Elias Magangi Nyangwono was also a lucky survivor. As a rule, he would start his day with breakfast around 6:30am after which he would prepare for his classes which started at 8am.

On April 2, however, he woke up an hour earlier because he needed to go to class early to get some work done.

Little did he know that it would make the difference between life and death.
The First Year student joined Garissa University College in September last year to study for a bachelor’s degree in Education .
He had settled in pretty well, even getting used to the hot weather and he had a few trustworthy friends like one Isaac Kosgei Bushen, his roommate.
So when he heard the first gunshot while in class, he knew something was terribly wrong. His first instinct was to run back to his hostel, but when he saw a student gunned down, he knew it was time to take cover.
“At first I thought it was an explosion,” he said. “Until the gunshots increased and I knew we were under attack.
“I stepped out of the classroom and from where I was I could see the main gate. I saw somebody being gunned down. I ran downstairs. I wanted to go to the hostel, but the gunfire did not stop,” he recalled.
“I decided to run towards the fence. Oh, we were so many of us running. Some were gunned down as they tried to escape. I was lucky I was able to jump over the fence.”

RAN TO POLICE STATION
Most of the students who managed to escape past the fence ran into the local police station, which is about a kilometre away.
“I was lucky I had my phone in my pocket. Even luckier that I had Sh1,150 in my M-Pesa account.

"I went straight to the bus station and got into a bus to Nairobi. I paid the bus fare via M-Pesa and we left immediately.”

The trip from Garissa to Nairobi was the longest he had ever taken.

He couldn’t get his mind off his friends, wondering what had happened to them.

Throughout the journey, he was following keenly the updates of the attack on radio. But it was his friends that he was really worried about.

He kept calling his roommate and best friend Isaac Bushen but nobody was answering.

“I thought my roommates had escaped and left their phones in the room,” he said.
One of his friend’s mother called him to ask about her son. Nothing was more heart breaking than telling a mother that you have no idea what happened to her son. “Later on, I realised that two of my four roommates, Isaac and Gideon, had been killed. I could not stop crying,” he said.

CHOKING WITH GRIEF
It was difficult for him to talk about his best friend Isaac Bushen without chocking with grief. Isaac, he said “was not only my roommate, but the best friend who knew everything about me. He loved his music and earphones were a permanent fixture in his ears. I left him asleep that morning.”
When the Nation spoke to Isaac Bushen’s brother, Christopher, he described his departed brother as his parents’ darling, the youngest son who would get them out of poverty. Isaac was born and brought up in Kapsokom, Elgeyo Marakwet. His parents are peasant farmers. Isaac would have turned 20 years old this May, if terrorists had not taken his life.
His other friend and roommate, Gideon Kipkurui, was also shot dead. Gideon was also asleep when Elias left the room.
“I am psychologically tortured. I am not myself. I am hurting. I keep thinking about my friends who died in the attack. Some things like this really change your life,” said Elias about his friends who are no more.
Mariam Njeri, an 18year-old Bachelor of Economics first year student escaped death by hiding in a closet for close to nine hours before she asked her friend “Twende tukufie nje ama tukae hapa?” (Do we go and die outside or we just wait here?)
Mariam and her room-mate had been hiding in the closet for a long time.
At one point, they heard somebody giving saying: “Don’t let them run away. Tell everyone who is hiding to come out.”

TERRORIST OF KDF?
Mariam was not sure if it was the terrorist or the KDF, but she was getting tired and hungry and her instinct told her that it was safe to come out. Thankfully, it was the KDF soldiers who had come to rescue them in their hostel.
“As we were escorted out of the hostel, I saw my classmate’s bloody body sprawled on the floor. There were so many bodies scattered in the hostel,” she recalled.
She said that when she was woken up by gunshots shortly after 5:30am that morning, she thought that it was an explosion as a result of an electric fault. Until she heard one of the terrorists say “We have come to kill!”
That was when fear gripped her.
“I froze. My feet could not carry me as the rest of my roommates were running away. I choose to hide in my closet,” she said. That single decision saved her life.
Miriti Dennis, a 22-year old Second Year Business Management student thought the gunshots were either as a result of a school strike or an exchange between police and thugs.
Until the terrorists walked into his hostel and started firing aimlessly.
“The first bullet hit the wall. That was when I knew that these were not police. I saw two men, one was dressed in army fatigues and carrying a black bags,” said Miriti.

FIRST GUNSHOT
The first gunshot, Miriti said, scattered everyone in different directions.
He went to hide at the back of the washrooms where he bumped into one of his friends who was also hiding there.
Miriti was lucky that he was able to scale the fence and jump over to the other side and seek refuge in his friend’s house outside the campus. But not so for most of his friends who died in the attack.

“Our basketball and rugby teams were almost all wiped out. I lost so many of my classmates, we were about 132, but now I doubt if we could be 100. So many of my friends died that day,” said Miriti.

None of the survivors had received professional counselling by the time of the interviews.

Most were just getting by, reliving their memories to curious journalists, family and friends.

They have sworn never to set foot in Garissa, because what began as a new life of independence and excitement that comes with university life ended so tragically.