‘I can never forget the screams’

By the time you read this, Caroline Wanjiru will be in India for her third reconstructive surgery.

Although you probably do not know her, she was one of the survivors of the May 28, 2012 terrorist attack at Assanads Building on Moi Avenue, Nairobi.

The 24-year old has become accustomed to pain, tears, scars and an uncertain future that the blast, which happened 40 months ago, brought in its wake.

Some died, while more than 20 others were injured. Caroline’s injuries were so severe that those who saw her being evacuated from the rubble screamed and scampered at her state.

“I had severe burns all over my face, hands and legs. Unknown to me, I had broken the left foot just above the ankle. Bones were protruding out.”

At the time Nation met her in her home in Githurai, Caroline, or Caro as she is known, had the foot on a stool. It was enclosed in a metal cast with metal prongs running from one side of the swollen leg to the other. Scars embossed her brown face and her eyebrows were barely visible.

At the time of the attack, Ms Wanjiru was employed as a sales girl at Stall Number 9 in the building, a job she did for barely two months in order to raise college fees.

“Next thing I knew was lying next to Josephine’s lifeless body…I can never forget the screams. I still hear them to date.”

Al-Shabaab had struck in what the group termed as “punishment to Kenya for sending troops to Somalia under the UN peace keeping campaign.”

Her friends called to find out if she was okay because “there was a building in town on fire”. It was a friend who called her mother, Elizabeth Muthoni, to inform her that she was injured in the blast.

“I did not know what to do when I saw her in the hospital bed,” she said. “She was unrecognisable from the burns and wounds.”

Caro recounted the events of the fateful day:

“A tall man was pacing up and down the pavement, near the clothes stall I was working in. I called Josephine, at the opposite stall to assist him because he looked restless.”

He took a yellow T-shirt from Josephine and said he wanted to buy it but said he did not enough cash and left his black bag at the stall so he could go and get more cash.

“No sooner had he walked out of the premises than the blast occurred.” She paused to let that sink in.

Caro says as her mother looks on: “Next thing I knew was lying next to Josephine’s lifeless body…I can never forget the screams. I still hear them to date.”

Caro’s only wish is that government and well-wishers would help her get her life back too.

Ms Muthoni complained that the family seem to have been abandoned in their suffering. “But my daughter has gone through too much pain for a lifetime and years later, no one seems to remember us. I do not want to be insensitive but people only remember Westgate, but rarely would you hear of those who died in Gikomba terrorist attack,” she said holding back tears.

FUND FOR SURVIVORS

The family feels the government has “assumed" about their pain and their life has literally come to a standstill.

“I want to work and earn a living like before,” Caro says. “I want to help my mother and my family but I can’t do any of that, not with these injuries, and we do not have the money for me to heal back to where I was three years back.”

Through friends and relatives, they were able to raise funds for her treatment in India where her left leg, whose bone marrow had been infected, was operated. Her ears were shaped and the shards of glass, pieces of metals and soil removed.

In April, Caro went back  to India to have the metal plates removed. The metal plates have since snapped, causing infection on the operated-on leg and exposing her to pain.

As Kenyans mark the fourth year since the Somalia offensive, Caro and her mother want the Government to set up a fund to cater for survivors of terror attacks. 

Back on Moi Avenue, the Assanads building that had more than 20 stalls before the attack has been re-constructed, and businesses are up and running. Caro’s only wish is that government and well-wishers would help her get her life back too.

Hopefully, a step at a time.