Remembering Fr Kaiser: A witness story

The night of August 24, 2000 is one Mr Paul Omuga - a night security guard at a Naivasha flower farm - will not soon forget. It was the night the story of his life, for a fleeting moment in time, crossed that of the late Father John Anthony Kaiser.

Mr Omuga had just stepped out of his work station when he stumbled on the late priest's body.

He recalls that it had been a chilly night that was unusually in only one regard, several speeding vehicles had disturbed the calm of the night keeping him in a heightened sense of anxiety filled with trepidation. It did not take much to keep him alert and wide-eyed. “I did not want to take any chance. I remained awake throughout a night that was unusually terrifying." he recollected.

True to his fears, less than 150 metres away lay the body of a white man. At the time, he had no idea whose it was.

A few metres away was a double can cabin pickup vehicle that he suspected belonged to the deceased. Nearby, was a shotgun.

Alarmed, he informed his fellow night guards as the dawn broke but, they too, could not recognise the body that had a visible skull injury. It was nobody they knew and they all agreed to adopt a wait and see attitude he says in an interview with Nation, ahead of a memorial service of the late Father Kaiser marked at the place where his body was found 16 years ago.

"When police arrived they asked us who saw the body first, I innocently volunteered unaware what would follow would signal a start to my woes that would force me into hiding for two months," he says.

The detectives assigned to the case were on his case. He was continuously monitored and watched his every move and summoned him to explain his version of the night's sequence of events.

ENEMY OF THE STATE

"I quickly realised that I had, unknowingly, walked into a trap. I had become a suspect and was being treated as one by the detectives questioning me."
It occured to him, they were no longer interested in his witness statement bit their line of interrogations was geared towards fixing him into taking the fall as the killer of the beloved but controversial priest.
The heat becoming unbearable, Mr Omuga decided to go into hiding, driven by a niggling feeling that his life was now in imminent danger. For two months he did not communicate with anyone and still refuses to reveal his whereabouts at the time.

"I was now in relative peace far away from the probing interviews by the detectives and up to now, I cannot disclose where I was,” says the night guard.
His suffering ended with the regime change after the 2002 general elections that tossed the ruling party, Kanu, out of office and ushered in the Narc regime.
“I was no longer being pursued over the issue and comfortably went through my daily errands undisturbed,” says Mr Omuga.

To keep the memories of his afflictions alive, his son who was born a few months after the Father Kaiser killing incident was named after him.

“We decided to call him John Kaiser to commemorate what I underwent at the hands of the detectives.”
In an exclusive interview with Nation at the site where the body was found-the Morendat Naivasha junction along the Nakuru-Nairobi highway, Mr Omuga said he would attend Father Kaiser’s memorial service; and he did.
“I will attend and, if given a chance, narrate the episode to the congregation,” he said.

According to an organiser of the commemorative mass and a member of the Catholic Justice and peace Commission, Mr Simon Peter, it will be the first time that the church will be holding a mass at the place where the body was found. The theme of the mass was ‘Right to Land and No to Evictions.’
“We want to celebrate Father Kaiser’s boldness in fighting for the down-trodden and especially his role in castigating the Enoospukia evictions,” he said.
Before he was found dead, he said that Father Kaiser’s had told his congregation: "Maisha yangu yamo hatarini, Nikifa wacha iwe hivyo. Lakini watu wapewe haki yao."

Fr. John Anthony Kaiser was found dead on August 24, 2000 besides his vehicle near Naivasha town along the Nairobi-Nakuru highway. The priest who presided over Lolgorian parish in Ngong, was also an out-spoken critic of the then-pervasive land-grabbing culture as well as a fearless crusader for social justice. Thousands of people attended his memorial mass on Sunday.