NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – Some family members of Kenyan students killed in an attack on a college by Islamic militants have sobbed, while others stayed silent. Some boiled with bitterness; others found solace in bittersweet memories of the dead. The mother of one student gunned down at Garissa University College considered suicide until counselors talked her out of it.
Different expressions of grief have played out this week at a morgue in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, sometimes in full view as family members emerge in shock and hysteria from a doorway after seeing the corpse of a cherished son or daughter, and sometimes in the relative privacy of tents where counselors lean forward and murmur words of consolation to the distraught.
These counselors are among the unsung heroes in the aftermath of the worst attack by Islamic extremists on Kenyan soil in almost 17 years, sometimes sharing the trauma of relatives of the dead as they unburden themselves or weep in their arms.
“You have to be there,” whether it means embracing a grieving parent, talking or just being present without saying anything, said Sammy Mwangi, a worker with the Kenya Red Cross.
A small army of counselors, many wearing Kenya Red Cross vests, were deployed to the Chiromo Funeral Parlour to lend support to relatives of some of the 148 people killed in the April 2 attack by al-Shabab, a Somalia-based extremist group. The morgue operation was winding down on Friday as bodies were handed over to families for burial after they were identified.