Garissa massacre: Father searches for daughter
NAIROBI, Kenya — Isaac Mutisya is a Kenyan father on a mission to find his daughter Risper, who’s been missing since the attack on her university in Garissa. She was on the campus on April 2 when militants from the Islamist group al-shabab attacked, killing 148 people. Her body has never been found.
Mutisya is a slight man with a delicate frame but he has an inner strength that only a restless father would acquire. Nearly four months after the Garissa University attack, he is still searching for his missing daughter.
While most families and parents have managed to lay to rest their sons and daughters killed in the Garissa attack, 23-year-old Risper is yet to be found — dead or alive.
the family mourns the child they are yet to see or bury. Risper’s mother has sleepless nights.
Mutisya has worked tirelessly to find her because, “When I sleep, I see her coming towards me, sometimes she extends her hands towards me, but when I reach out she disappears — these dreams haunt me a lot.”
“this will continue until I know the whereabouts of my daughter,” he says.
Since the attack, the 51-year-old maths teacher has been to Nairobi more than seven times, making the six-hour round-trip from Kitui, a town approximately 180km east of Nairobi, by matatu (minibus). He is searching for answers, asking questions, waiting for any information about his beloved daughter.
He exudes pride when he talks about his daughter, who joined Garissa University in 2013 to study business management.
“Risper grew up a very disciplined girl, she was very good in maths and I must say that she took after me, because I’m a maths teacher.
“She was also very beautiful, and I feel very hurt that I don’t know where she is.
“Risper told me that after her studies in business management, she wanted to become a business consultant, and I’m very sure that, had she finished her course, she would be somebody in Kenya in the future.”
there is a deep sadness, a deep pain, hidden behind this father’s pride — while he talks about his daughter, he looks lovingly at the photographs he’s brought.
Mutisya has documented everything. He carries a suitcase with him, from where he pulls out the many photographs of Risper.
He goes back to his bag again and carefully lifts out sheets of paperwork from a plastic bag, showing us written details of all the documents he has put together.
When he speaks he is determined, but concerned that his interest in finding Risper will not upset the Kenyan government who, he feels, haven’t done enough to help him find the answers he is looking for.
“I don’t believe they are doing their best,” he says.
Before Mutisya agreed to this interview, he told us he would like the Kenyan government to respond to his questions. We approached the Ministry of Interior who declined this specific request and instead sent this reply:
“Please ask Mutisya to report the matter to the National Police Service where he can get assistance because as far as I know, that matter has not been reported to the police. I have no doubt that reporting to the police will be more helpful to him than media interviews.”
But Mutisya is angry and shakes his head, he pulls out yet another document showing evidence that the matter was reported at the police station in Garissa. He insists he has also told government officials who visited him at his home about the police report. “they have a copy of this,” he says.
A day after the attack, Mutisya heard that there were injured students at the Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi, and he made his way to the city. “I was waiting to meet her alive,” he says. But to his disappointment, he did not find Risper there.
He was then asked to go down to the Chiromo mortuary, also in Nairobi. Here he joined hundreds of “wailing” parents looking for their children.
the mortuary contained most of the 142 students who were killed in the attack. Doctors and mortuary workers helped to turn over the already decomposing bodies so they could be identified.
“On the second day, there were about 119 bodies all on the ground, and it was such a fearful sight. It was very traumatising, very overwhelming,” he says.
Mutisya’s search at the mortuary lasted a week. At one stage he had identified a body “resembling Risper” but his hopes were dashed when another family had marked and identified this as their own child.
During this process, Mutisya claims there was no proper identification.
“Bodies were just being given to people,” he says.
“Finger-printing or proper identification only took place on 7 April, five days after the attack, when bodies were too decomposed to identify.”
Mutisya thinks that in the days before a more formal process be- gan, a mix-up could have occurred.
the government denies that the identification of victims was badly handled. In a statement to the BBC they said “all the victims were properly identified and the government took the extra step of assisting families in burial arrangements, counselling and other post-trauma support.”
there was another glimmer of hope — not long after the initial search, he was told there were three bodies of female victims left at the mortuary, but by the time he got there, two of them had been identified and taken away by their respective families, this time using DNA.
Mutisya and his wife offered saliva swabs with the hope that the last remaining body was that of Risper’s. Days later they were told the tests were negative.
that body is still believed to be at the mortuary, yet to be identified by the family that might have claimed the wrong one.
Mutisya says he knows it would be a big task for the government to exhume the bodies, but they haven’t told him if they are going to go ahead with this procedure.
“they have kept me in the dark and I am not getting any official communication from the government about what they are doing to find my daughter — dead or alive,” he says.
Mutisya has been to the Kenyan parliament, where on June 16 he spoke to MPS. He was told that the government had been unable to locate Risper’s body.
“I was told to wait and they said they are trying their best, I am still waiting.”
Mutisya is quiet for a moment and says he hopes this search is not seen negatively by the Kenyan government, but points out that if he had found his daughter he would not be talking about it today. All he is looking for is closure.
“If I had got my daughter and buried her I would not be talking today — I would be a very settled person — but now, three-and-ahalf months on, I’ve never heard from my daughter or seen her.
“Very little is being done to help me get her back — dead or alive.”
the family still grieve for their daughter, their sister, their child.
“Until I find the body of my daughter I will not rest, I will not keep quiet, I will keep on talking and asking — friends, organisations, the government — how I will be able to find my daughter.”
“I am not looking for a goat or a hen — I am looking for a human being.”