Five months down the line, I still can’t tell if I will ever find Risper

Isaac Mutua Mutisya keeps excusing himself to wipe the tears from his eyes and compose himself before he can continue talking. It is obvious that, even though it is more than five months since his daughter was killed in the terrorist attack on Garissa University on April 2, the pain of not finding her body is still raw.

The mathematics teacher at Itolkela Girls Secondary School can no longer concentrate on his work because in every one of his students’ faces, he sees now his daughter, Risper Mutindi Kasyoka; they all look and behave like her, some even talk the way she did.

And he no longer switches off his phone even when in class as he is waiting expectantly for a call that might just tell him what happened to his daughter.

Risper, a second year business management student and the second-last born child in the family, is believed to have been among the 144 students who were killed in Garissa University when gunmen entered the college and opened fire on students at dawn.

“It has been a long and painful search for the body of my daughter. It was bad enough knowing that she had been killed, but words cannot describe the agony and pain I have gone through in the search for her body. It is just too much for me and my family” Mr Mutisya says.

He has made several trips to the Chiromo Mortuary, Kenyatta National Hospital,  the National Disaster Management offices at Nyayo House, and the Directorate of Criminal Investigations offices on Kiambu Road, among other offices, hoping to  be told that her body has finally been found.

But after every trip, he returns home to Ndonguni Village in Nzambani, Kitui County, a disappointed man, with no information for a family eager for any news about the young woman’s disappearance.

“It has not been easy going home to her mother and siblings with no news about her whereabouts. It has really taken a toll on us. Sometimes I do not want to look at their faces. It breaks my heart,” Mr Mutisya says.

FINGERPRINT ANALYSIS

He learnt about the April 2 attack through the head teacher of the school where he works. The head teacher had learnt of the attack through the media and was aware that Mr Mutisya’s daughter was a student at the university.

“I did not go to class that day but instead concentrated on calling my daughter. However, she did not answer. I kept trying again and again, but in vain. With time, my hands started shaking and I could not hold the phone steadily.

“At around 5.30pm, her phone went off. I became more and more anxious as we followed the events through the media. Every time the Interior Cabinet Secretary, Joseph Nkaissery, held a press briefing, my heart broke. It tore me apart,” he says as he pauses to recall the fateful day.

Later in the day, and following announcements in the media that the families of those who had been killed in the attack gather at the Chiromo Mortuary, Mr Mutisya went there, accompanied by some family members, even though he kept hoping against hope that she was still alive.

“We queued and looked at the bodies one by one. At one point we saw one body that we thought was  hers but another family later claimed it, and a fingerprint analysis confirmed that it was that of a student called Nyokabi,” he says.

The next day he again  went  with some family members to Kenyatta National Hospital, where the injured students had been taken.

“Of the 24 students at the hospital, my lovely Risper was nowhere to be found,” he says.

Mr Mutisya keeps referring to his daughter as “my lovely Risper,” saying she resembled him in many ways.

His family continued praying and remained and hopeful that Risper was alive somewhere but as time went, their hopes that she would be found alive started fading. 

Yet stories of students who had survived the attack and were found after four to five days continued emerging.

“There was even a story about a girl who survived inside a wardrobe by drinking lotion and was found after five days. That story rekindled my hopes of finding my daughter. At some point, I wished I could be given the chance to go to the university and look for my daughter. I wished I were that parent who was relieved after finding  his daughter.

“I had a feeling she was helpless somewhere between the desks, or inside a wardrobe, just somewhere, wishing her father could help her. At that time, I had a whole mixture of emotions: I was hopeful, desperate, bitter, but felt helpless and sorry for my daughter,” he says.

Day after day, he says, he visited the mortuary while at the same time keenly following radio updates on the aftermath of the attack, just in case Risper had not been killed and the  story of her survival was  announced in the news. But that did not happen.

Meanwhile, he continued to look again and again at the bodies lined up for identification, just to make sure he had not overlooked something.

The search involved looking at the physical structure of the students’ bodies, and he sometimes had to open the mouths of  badly damaged bodies to look at the teeth as he “vividly remembered her smile, with her well-aligned teeth”. But as he kept searching, the anxiety was too much for Risper’s mother, who sank into a depression.

“By Sunday, April 12, the families that had positively identified their kin had taken them for burial, with only three remaining, while 11 families were still looking for their loved ones.

“At that point, the disaster team said they needed to take fingerprints for biometric identification. The bodies were decomposing, so it was impossible to identify them just by looking at the physical structure. No parent should go through what we went through; it was horrifying,” he says.

CLINGING TO HOPE

The next day when Mr Mutisya went back to the morgue, two more bodies had been identified and placed aside. The only remaining body, that of a female, could not be identified just by looking, so DNA tests had to be conducted.

On Thursday, April 23, Mr Mutisya was called and told to go to the Chiromo Mortuary to collect the results of the DNA tests on the body. However, they showed that the body was not Risper’s.

“They told me there was no relationship between me and the body remaining at the mortuary,” Mr Mutisya says. He adds that he had had a feeling all along that the body was not his daughter’s, going by  the physical structure.

“The body at the mortuary was that of a taller, slimmer and darker person but since the bodies of the Garissa victims had been badly damaged, and all the other parents had identified their children’s bodies, I was just hanging on to the hope that it might be Risper’s” he says.

Since then, Mr Mutisya has not known peace and keeps wondering where his daughter might be. And if she was killed as reported, why can’t he  find her body?

The story took another   turn on Wednesday, September 9, when an officer from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations Headquarters called Mr Mutisya to inform him that they had obtained a court order to exhume a body in Itiva Nzou Village in Kyuso, Kitui County, which they suspected to be his daughter’s.

“I was supposed to accompany him that Friday to that village to witness the exhumation the body. That family had lost a daughter, Philomena Kasyoka, in the attack on Garissa University, and the police suspect there might have been a mix-up because of the  name Kasyoka, so they had ended up burying my daughter. 

But on arrival at the home,  the team comprising  police officers, Red Cross personnel and Mr Mutisya, were given a hostile welcome by the family of Mr Peter Munyoki, who was away in South Sudan.

 They said they had been informed of the planned exhumation only the previous day.and started mourning.  They asked the police officers to give them the body of their daughter before exhuming the one presumed to be Philomena's.

A relative, David Muthengi, said they need time to organise for the exhumation and conduct cultural rituals.

He says the family requested the police to take samples from Philomena’s parents for DNA testing to establish if the body at Chiromo was their daughter’s, but their request was ignored.

Philomena’s mother, Beatrice Kuthi, said all she wanted was to let her daughter rest in peace.”

“That’s enough, please!” Mr Mutisya recalls her saying. 

Philomena was buried in May, but detectives believe the body lying at the Chiromo Mortuary is actually hers.

Mr Munyoki’s family said that exhuming the body and leaving the grave open had serious implications.

One of Philomena’s aunts, Mary Kalunda, said it was a taboo among the Kamba to exhume a body and leave the grave open as  it would “swallow” more people.

“If the body must be exhumed, we have to replace the body in the grave with another one. Give us Philomena, then, so that we can bury her,” she said.

DREAMS CUT SHORT

Risper’s father, said he fully understood the cultural requirement  and was willing to wait for the DNA results on the  body lying at the Chiromo Mortuary.

The exhumation aborted but Mr Mutisya hopes that DNA tests will show that the body at Chiromo is Risper’s.

“Otherwise, that would mean that my daughter was buried by someone else whom we do not know. It will be harder to find her out of all the female students buried. I do not want to imagine that possibility,” he says.

Risper’s mother, Mary Kasyoka, could not speak to us on the occasions we have met her because, according to her husband, she is overwhelmed by emotion.

“She is really disturbed. She no longer eats or sleeps. She cries day and night,” he says, adding that the family no longer enjoys the happiness it previously did.

Last week, when Risper’s belongings were delivered to the family by Moi University, Mrs Mutisya wept uncontrollably as she went through her daughter’s books and clothes saying, “I sent you to school and this is what I get back, my daughter. I cannot see you and all I have is news that you are dead. I have not even seen your body.”

According to Mr Mutisya, Risper was a beautiful and humble child, and full of ambition. She had already written gospel songs and was planning to release an album when after completing her studies.

“She was one of those children who had never been got into any kind of trouble  and our neighbours would always come  visiting when she was around. She was charismatic and had friends from all age groups who sought her advice. She was also an active member of the church. I cannot quite describe Risper in a few words. Let me just say she was a gift from God,” Mr Mutisya says.

For now, Philomena’s family is waiting for investigators to collect samples from family members to enable them to conduct DNA tests.

The samples will  be compared with those collected from the body at the Chiromo Mortuary. The  family insists that they will only allow  the exhumation of the body presumed to be Risper’s if the DNA analysis confirms that the body at Chiromo is Philomena’s.

TIMELINE

Recap of main events

• April 2: Terrorists attack Garissa University, Risper Mutindi Kasyoka is believed to be among those killed 

• April 2: Risper’s family goes to Kenyatta National Hospital to see if she’s among the survivors but she’s not. 

• April 12: Isaac Mutua Mutisya visits Chiromo Mortuary, where only three bodies are remaining. 

• April 23: Mr Mutisya receives a call to collect the results of a DNA test conducted on the only remaining body; it turns out they are not related. 

• Sept 9: Mr Mutisya receives a call from the CID telling him he should accompany a team going to exhume a body that was buried by mistake in Kitui County; the mission fails.