Moi given 19-gun salute sent-off

What you need to know:

  • Military pageantry, pomp, tradition and rituals on display as former President is laid to rest.

  • Surrounded by hundreds of trees and blossoming flowers, soldiers from the Kenya Navy led by Lt-Colonel Eliud Keter carried out the 19-gun-salute.

  • The fly past was followed by playing of the Long Reveille, which the military plays as a final farewell.

About 400 family members and selected dignitaries watched as the military performed the last rites at the graveside of their former Commander-in-Chief, retired President Daniel arap Moi, who was buried at his Kabarak home on Wednesday.

The mourners at the graveside ceremony included Chief Justice David Maraga, National Assembly Speaker Justin Muturi, Speaker of the Senate Ken Lusaka, Mama Ngina Kenyatta, former vice-presidents Kalonzo Musyoka and Musalia Mudavadi and Cabinet Secretaries.

Mr Maraga and Mr Lusaka were the only leaders who addressed the small gathering picked from a multitude of more than 50,000 who graced the funeral service.

Mr Lusaka, like most of the speakers of the day, was influenced by the former President, who inspired him to become a religious man.

The short ceremony at the graveside started with a prayer, then all the three stanzas of the National Anthem were recited, followed by a two-minute silence in honour of the departed President.

This was followed by buglers playing eerie and evocative The Last Post as the body was lowered into the grave.

The Last Post, which is either a bugle call or a cavalry trumpet call used at military funerals, refers simply to the sounding after the final sentry-post had been inspected.

But it got a new role in the 1850s after it was played when a soldier died in a foreign land, and buglers were forced to play it as there was no music available to accompany the departed soul on its final journey.

Later it got adopted for playing at burials. It originated from British troops who were in the battlefields in the Netherlands.

It signalled the close of a day of battle and gestured to those who were still out and wounded or separated that the fighting was done.

The soldiers would follow the sound of the call to find safety and rest.

In Commonwealth Nations’ Remembrance Day ceremonies, The Last Post is used as an implied summoning of the spirits of the fallen to the memorial and to symbolically end the day.

Surrounded by hundreds of trees and blossoming flowers, soldiers from the Kenya Navy led by Lt-Colonel Eliud Keter carried out the 19-gun salute with the thundering sound of the guns momentarily disturbing the silence the home is accustomed to.

After the gun salute, Warrant Officer II Gibson Mwandawiro, the military MC, welcomed the Kenya Air Force, which carried out an honorary fly past.

The fly past was followed by playing of the Long Reveille, which the military plays as a final farewell.

After the laying of the marble at the grave, Brigadier Joakim Mwamburi, who has been the commander of the parade of pallbearers, handed over the flag used during the burial ceremony to the family.

Thereafter, mourners placed wreaths on the grave.

The former President identified his burial site during the burial of his wife Lena in July 2004. He was laid to rest next to her.