Trauma of mall attack cost hair stylist her voice for two years
Susan Njuguna, Westgate terror attack survivor during interview in Nairobi on September 10, 2014. She lost her voice due to the attacks. PHOTO | JEFF ANGOTE | NATION MEDIA GROUP
What you need to know:
- Susan Njuguna's phone rang and when she tried to answer the call, she could not speak.
- She then spent months and a small fortune visiting speech therapists in frantic efforts to get her voice back.
- Despite the return of her ability to speak, the memories of Westgate still haunt her.
Though the Westgate shopping mall has reopened and business is back to normal, survivors like Susan Njuguna will remember the horrific attack every day of their lives.
A hair stylist at Ashley’s Westgate branch, Ms Njuguna lost her voice a week after the attack.
Her phone rang and when she tried to answer the call, she could not speak. She then spent months and a small fortune visiting speech therapists in frantic efforts to get her voice back.
“The specialists said there was nothing wrong with my vocal cords, but that a part of my brain had switched off because of the trauma,” Ms Njuguna told Daily Nation.
For about a year-and-a-half, she could only communicate by sign language, written notes or text messages.
She said she would avoid telling her clients the real cause of her muteness and would blame it on a sore throat.
“I don’t like sympathy, so I never told them that I lost my voice after Westgate. Sometimes one would call and I would just listen and then text back my reply,” recalled the mother of four.
But just as abruptly as her voice deserted her, it came back in January 2015.
“My voice came back out of anger.” During an altercation with somebody who had made her very angry, the word “nonsense,” escaped her lips.
“I was so shocked that I forgot I was annoyed,” Ms Njuguna recounted. The first person she spoke to after that was her daughter, whom she called and she came running. “She couldn’t believe her ears.”
MEMORIES HAUNT HER
Coincidentally, one of the specialists she consulted had been doing research on her condition and had been advised to annoy her to get her to talk again. She planned to try the experiment on her when Susan called and told her what had happened.
Despite the return of her ability to speak, the memories of Westgate still haunt her.
Before the salon reopened at the mall, it had moved to another shopping centre in Lavington. Though the location changed, her fear and insecurity stayed.
“I only felt secure on the sixth floor because there was no activity. I felt that if they (terrorists) were to come back, they wouldn’t go to the sixth floor because there was nothing there,” said Ms Njuguna. Since then, she has gone back to work at the Westgate mall.
“One of the therapists I saw advised me to come back here often. They said it was part of the healing process,” she said cheerfully adding that the support of her parents as well as her employer, Ms Terry Mungai, has helped her get back on her feet.
