When death is so near, yet so far

On the New Year eve of 1981, businessman Peter Ndung’u Muturi and two colleagues were to have dinner and stay late to usher in the New Year at Eland dining room in the west wing of the Norfolk Hotel.

They arrived a few minutes past seven and ordered drinks as they talked business ready for dinner by nine in the evening.

Just before 8.30 pm, they changed their minds and decided to change venue to a place where they could have a more “African setting”, an outdoor place where they could get nyama choma and shake a leg to the rhumba tune.

They left in a convoy. Just a few metres next to the Central Police Station gate, they were deafened by a loud blast and their vehicles suddenly stalled in the middle of the road.

Outside, a ball of fire and smoke enveloped the entire stretch of the road from Kijabe Street to University Way.

A bomb had exploded at the Norfolk Hotel with its epicentre at the Eland dining room where they were to have dinner. Twenty people died and 87 were seriously injured.
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The man behind the bombing was 34-year-old Qaddura Abdul al-Hamid, a Morocco-born terrorist working at the behest of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO).

The Palestinians were on a revenge mission after Kenya had helped Israeli commandos storm Uganda’s Entebbe Airport to rescue Israeli hostages hijacked in a French Airbus.

The terrorist had booked himself at Norfolk hotel a week earlier and sneaked out to Saudi Arabia early in the morning before the explosion.
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Businessman Muturi and his two colleagues had escaped by a whisker. We will return to the story of Mr Muturi.

Another one to have escaped the Norfolk bombing by just a few hours was Vice-President Mwai Kibaki. He had a drink with friends at the hotel but had left early in the evening.

Immediately after the explosion, word spread like bushfire that Kibaki had been seen at the hotel that evening.

At the time, the VP was involved in a vicious supremacy battle with a rival camp in the Moi government. Thinking the bomb could have been targeted at Kibaki, chief editor of the Weekly Review magazine Hillary Ngw’eno telephoned then head of Security Intelligence, James Kanyotu, with whom they were on first name terms: “James, just tell me: Is Kibaki in the rubble?” He wasn’t.
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Back to businessman Muturi. At about 10 on the night of January 21, 1997, he arrived at his home in Muthiga area, about 30 kilometres from the city, on the Nairobi-Nakuru highway.

He had a long day looking for a school for his daughter who had just sat her KCPE examination. After late supper with his wife, Lucy, he made a telephone call and they retired to their bedroom at around 11.

At about 3 in the night, and the couple in deep sleep, a lorry loaded with sacks of potatoes and driving on the highway left the road and flew about 80 metres past a dusty road, a thick kai-apple fence and stone perimeter wall, to stop right in the couple’s bedroom, burying them in a heap of stones, concrete and potatoes.

Mr Muturi died on the spot. By the grace of God, his wife survived.

IRONY

What an irony by the Grim Reaper: Mr Muturi had escaped sure death in the Norfolk blast years earlier only to die in the most unexpected circumstances in his bedroom!

Chief Inspector of Police Joseph Odiko was the officer in charge (OCPD) at the Nyahururu police base in the late 1980s. I had just left high school and been appointed a Nation stringer in the town, which made me interact with the OCPD from time to time.

One afternoon, I called the head office at the old Nation House to find the office had been looking for me to make a follow-up on a story. Some couple had a domestic quarrel that resulted in the wife setting the family house ablaze, killing her husband and inflicting serious burns on herself and their children.

I dashed to Nyahururu police headquarters to get more details before moving to the scene of the incident. I went straight to the office of the OCPD Odiko. It was a weekend and neither he nor his secretary were in.

OCPD

But told he was around, I decided to sit at the reception and wait. A few minutes later, the OCPD walked in. He looked surprised to find me alone in his office but wasn’t offended. “Young man, why do you come to my office uninvited and give yourself a seat?’ he asked.

“Look here my friend”, he said as we sat. “Never go to people’s places unexpectedly and hang around when they’re not there. They may think you don’t mean well and harm you!”

Nevertheless, he gave me the information I wanted and we parted as friends.

Not long after, I moved to Nairobi and lost touch with the OCPD.

Several years later, I opened a copy of the Daily Nation to read a story headlined: “Top policeman killed in mistaken identity”

It was about my friend the OCPD, who had since been promoted and posted to Police Headquarters.

The story said my good friend had been killed by a mob in his rural home in Migori.

HOUSE

He was constructing a house there and had asked his two workers to accompany him at night to the home of the owner of the lorry he wanted to hire to drop building materials at his site.

The lorry owner, on seeing strangers in his compound at night, raised the alarm. Within no time, my friend and his two workers were surrounded by villagers armed with crude weapons and baying for their blood.

He drew his pistol and shot in the air to scare them away, but that only made it worse.

They were stoned to death. As I read the story, tears rolled down my cheeks as I remembered that afternoon chat with the OCPD in Nyahururu. If only he had heeded the advice he’d given me that afternoon ...
FILM-MAKER
Some time in the late 1970s, celebrated film-maker and retired broadcaster Oliver Litondo was scheduled to take part in a movie-shooting at the Amboseli National Park.

The crew was to depart from Wilson Airport early morning on a chartered flight. Litondo had his stand-by taxi-man to pick him up from his house and drop him at the airport.

On that day, the taxi-man, who was usually punctual, arrived late. Litondo got to the airport just as the chartered aircraft was taxing on the runway for take-off.

He went back home mad at himself and at the taxi-man that he had missed the shooting at the Amboseli.

But there was to be no shooting. The plane crashed a few minutes after take-off, killing everybody on board.

Diversion from colleague saved my life

In the mid-1990s, I was news editor at then People weekly newspaper. My friend and colleague John Kamau was a senior writer.

KITENGELA

One Saturday afternoon, I was to accompany a staff team to feature a hotel that was opening in Kitengela town, Kajiado. The company car was parked outside and everybody inside waiting for me.
Suddenly, as I stepped out of our offices in Westlands area, John Kamau walked in his usual swagger — the swagger was more pronounced than it is today.

Those days John and I were young and with a good salary we were yet to figure out what to do with. And so our afternoons were full of many, but largely unproductive, activities.

“Where are you going?” he asked. “Kitengela with the colleagues outside”, I replied. “Must you go? That’s a small function for a news editor!” he said with a snigger. “We better go to our usual joint.” I had no good reason to argue.

I walked to the parked vehicle and excused myself to colleagues that something had come up and I couldn’t join them. “Of course, you can handle the assignment without me”,

I said. They replied in the affirmative, happy the boss trusted them. I wished them safe journey,

I requested the advertising sales executive, Mr Kirimi, to sit in the front passenger seat where I was supposed to sit. “Sit here, you’re now the team leader”, I told him.

On their way back from Kitengela, they were involved in a tragic accident and front-seat passenger Kirimi died on the spot.

Sorry Kirimi, and thanks John Kamau for walking into the office at just the time you did.
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Happy New Year to all and let’s thank God we have seen yet another year.

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