Relatives recount last moments with loved ones

Late Wednesday night, Stephen Rotich had a long chat with his brother Isaac Pop Bushen on Facebook. He was in high spirits and told him that he had been doing well in his studies.

They communicated till 3.15 am, and the last thing he wrote was; “good night, we will chat again kesho” — but tomorrow was never to be for Isaac.

“The next day, I opened my social media accounts and there was news of an attack at their university and I instantly tried to call him but his phone went unanswered” Mr Rotich said.

For the whole day, he repeatedly called him as news of the attack went from bad to worse.

“His phone kept going through, but it was unanswered and so I just had a feeling that he had died” Mr Rotich said on Saturday at the Chiromo Mortuary.

He had joined other families of the students who could not be reached on phone to see if their loved ones were among the bodies there.

“We have gone in and we have positively identified one body as that of my brother. He was shot in the head” he said.

Rotich said they had not received any information about the death of their second-born brother and that they kept anticipating that they would find him alive because his phone was ringing even 50 hours after the attack.

Isaac, who was a first-year student pursuing economics, had never mentioned to his brother that those at the college felt in any danger.

But Kenneth Wasonga, a fellow student, said some flyers had been circulating on the campus on April 1, but the students and staff thought they were April Fools Day pranks.

“There were rumours that there was going to be an attack on students. Some students said the messages were written in Arabic and that the writer cautioned Muslim students,” he said.

Wasonga said he had not read read the messages himself, but he had heard the rumours from his friend, and they both dismissed them.

But two months earlier, Isaac had called his brother and told him that Administration Police officers had been deployed to guard the institution.

“When he told me that, I had a feeling that the security forces had received information that the school was not safe, but when I asked my brother, he told me that everything was okay. In fact he told me that the town was peaceful” Mr Rotich, who is a student at Kenya Medical Training College in Nyeri, said.

“It is very painful to lose a loved one in a war he was not even involved in. I cannot even start to explain the pain my parents are going through now.”

OFFICER HAD BEEN POSTED THERE THREE WEEKS AGO

One of the officers killed along with the students he was protecting at Garissa University College early on Thursday morning had dropped out of a teacher training college to become a policeman.

Peter Maside Nyangure, 29, was deployed to the university just three weeks ago and had informed his brother on the last day of March that he was fine.
“He called me on March 31 and said he would be on duty at the university and that the job was easier than what he was doing earlier,” his brother Michael Musula recalled.

Mr Nyangure, the seventh-born in a family of eight children, had been working in Garissa for the last one-and-a-half years.

“We heard of the attack at the school very early in the morning, and the reports were that students had been killed together with two watchmen so I hoped that my brother could have possibly survived,” Michael said,

THE BAD NEWS

“Then at around 5 p.m., his colleague called my father and told him that my brother was one of those who had been killed in the attack. Since my father is in our rural home in Butere, Mumias, he called and asked us to wait for the body at the Chiromo Mortuary.”

His brother’s body was among the 20 that arrived at the mortuary on Thursday night.

“I have seen his body and I have positively identified it. I have already told my parents back home,” the overwhelmed Michael told the Sunday Nation.
He described his brother as a loyal security officer who loved his job and helped members of his family whenever they needed help.

“I can say that he is one of those family members that always has a solution to every problem. He would go out of his way to help anyone, even when he did not have enough to offer,” his cousin, Asnas Eshikumo, said.

Asnas wondered why people could be so inhuman as to kill people who were innocent and did not have the capacity to influence government decisions.

“My cousin was very humble and had a sense of humour. Whenever he came home, he attracted many visitors. We shall surely miss him,” she said.