Brian’s family celebrated his passing out ceremony the same day Anthony Ouma’s celebrated his; on August 30. Lucy takes out her phone and shows me a photo of Anthony, his neck covered in tinsel and his cousin, Lucy’s son, grinning next to him.
Anthony’s parents are all the way in Busia and so Lucy – who works at a security firm in Nairobi – took advantage of an opportunity to run an errand to check if any progress had been made in the identification of her nephew’s body. Every so often the wind picks up and the smell of decomposing bodies hits us, “the bodies must be in bad shape,” she says, oblivious to the fly that lands on the bridge of her nose.
Stella Mugambi knows just how bad a state the bodies are in. She sits resignedly on a curb at the mortuary’s car park. “It’s him,” she tells me.
“He’d just bought a car. He now wanted to build a house, marry and finally have children of his own.”
He’d have made a great dad if his nephew’s fondness of him is anything to go by, “My nine year old son wanted to become a policeman just like him.”
Twenty-eight year old Martin Mugambi was part of the Anti-Stock theft unit to be specific. He’d gone to Baragoi in Samburu just 10 days before he lost his life.
Stella thought nothing of it, “the last time I spoke to him was on October, 20. They move around a lot for their work.”
Martin’s family home is in Meru. As a single mother, there isn’t much Stella can do for her parents and so Martin was such a great help; to them and their younger sister.
“He had told her to select whatever course she wanted to pursue in college. Money, he said, wasn’t an issue.”
Stella can’t go on. Grief takes over and the tears begin to fall again from the blood shot eyes; the soothing hand on her back a small comfort if at all.
About The Author
