‘Eastleigh bomb attacker posed as normal client’

Sheraton Hotel owner Clair Wahito stands forlornly amidst the debris of the business that took her seven years to build. [PHOTO: MACHUA KOINANGE/STANDARD]

By Machua Koinange

Nairobi, Kenya: Daniel Mutuku Mutua did not feel right about a customer who walked into the Sheraton hotel on Eastleigh’s 12th street last Tuesday night. There was something really odd about him.

“He was carrying a back-pack and seemed to be in a rush,” He recalls.

Mutuku, 30, has worked at the hotel without the slightest resemblance to the famous international chain for close to five years.

The Eastleigh Sheraton is everything the international chain is not but aspires to be. It is located in a filthy, dusty street in Nairobi’s most chaotic district. The place is after all a labyrinth of chaotic human and vehicular traffic.

For years, Eastleigh has echoed to the chants of hawkers displaying their wares on crowded streets and thundering music blaring from matatus whose touts scream endlessly.

The interior of the hotel is dusty and not so flashy. But with only Sh50, you can walk in and leave, satisfied after a heavy meal of ndengu and chapati – a favorite on the menu.

And it was in this dinghy location last Tuesday that a terror suspect walked out calmly after a meal and left an improvised explosive device that claimed six lives. Sheraton was part of a three-pronged attack that left residents shattered and mourning.

Security forces suspect it is the work of Somali militant group Al Shabaab which has recently stepped up attacks in Mombasa and Nairobi. The Eastleigh attacks are emblematic of how family lives are still shattered days after terrorist have wrecked havoc and weeks after the media cameras have moved to the next big story.

The suspect walked in at about 7:10pm when the hotel was packed with customers who were having their dinner. Majority of those who frequented the hotel were bottom-of-the-pyramid customers who included mkokoteni owners and daily labourers.

The 20 -inch television set atop the corner of the restaurant was broadcasting the early evening news. Mutuku says the suspect seemed not to be in a hurry to order or to be served. He sauntered up to him. “He never asked what food was available and the first dish I mentioned to him – ndengu and chapati – he just said yes.”

Impatient suspect

The suspect ate quickly. Mutuku was serving and acting as the cashier at the same time. The suspect walked to the counter. “He seemed to be in a hurry to pay and leave. He gave me Sh50 and I was fumbling to find change, which irritated him.”

The bill was amounting to Sh40. The suspect became impatient and told Mutuku in fluent Kiswahili that he could keep the change if he did not have it.

Mutuku instead declined. “I found a Sh10 coin and handed it to him.”

All was normal until five minutes after the suspect had left. Mutuku was, by a stroke of luck in the adjoining room, chopping up a chapati to be served to a customer. He remembers hearing an ear-splitting explosion, like the concussion of a thunderclap and seeing a wash of light.

The explosion had splintered everything in its path. There was the odd symphony of shattering glass, the squeal of metal and horrific shrieks. The force was so powerful that it jolted him against the kitchen wall and onto the floor.

For ten minutes, Mutuku lay on the dusty ground, feeling a burning sensation on his arm. There was an eerie silence all around and he still did not know what had just happened.

His compatriot, Peter Gakuya, who manages the establishment, is the son of the proprietor, Clair Wahito. He was at the cashier’s counter and had just witnessed the brief argument between the suspect and Mutuku over the Sh10 balance.

“I remember that as soon as the suspect walked out, he locked the main door from outside, locking all of us inside. That was followed almost immediately by the explosion,” Gakuya recalls.

Close shave

Mutuku looked through the dusty haze wafting all around in utter disbelief. He was still alive. Customers who survived were storming out of the hotel and stepping all over his body as they frantically raced through plumes of smoke and choking debris. It was total pandemonium.

Mutuku lay on the floor wincing in pain and his heart filled with nauseating terror. He belly-crawled to the door and out of hell. Later after he had been taken to the hospital in an ambulance, he could not believe the extent of his injuries. The scars of terror are embedded on his right arm and forever in his heart.

Gakuya was lucky. With no visible injuries except for a small burn on his arm, he staggered out of the hotel.

Looking back, Mutuku thinks that the suspect dropped the IED on the corner where he was seated and walked out with his back-pack. The corner of the restaurant that absorbed full impact has about a three-feet-deep hole now covered in debris of stone and concrete.

Some of the concrete walls around the restaurant caved in or cracked under impact. The damage to the hotel is extensive. Kitchen utensils, plates, spoons and plastic washing containers are strewn all over the floor.

Next door hotel neighbour, Halima Mohammed, who moved from Wajir to Nairobi to run her small business says the impact of the explosion ripped the roof off and the dusty ceiling caved in.

Halima had named her hotel Masha’Alla or joy, praise to God. And when everything happened next door and she was spared, she knew God was looking down on her.

She recalls: “One of my customers had his head shattered from the collapsing wall. I was scared.”

Sheraton hotel owner Wahito,49, who opened the establishment in 2006 was in another smaller hotel located a block away. Her phone rang minutes after the explosion. It was her daughter in law, Faith, Gakuya’s wife.

“Come to the hotel immediately, we have been bombed!” her desperate voice echoed. Wahito hopped onto a boda boda and arrived at the hotel in less than ten minutes, but she was not prepared for the scene of utter destruction that presented itself. Everything she had put seven years into was gone.

Human flesh

She was however relieved to find her son Gakuya seated safely inside a police vehicle. “He was dazed and confused about what had happened. Three of my employees were rushed to hospital,” she says.

But the worst awaited her. The hotel floor was a carpet of human flesh and specks of blood. The sight of six mutilated bodies on the floor ambushed her. And the images suddenly came flooding back of the 1998 US embassy bombings. She recalled looking for her friends who died in the attack.

“Everything suddenly became real; the images of the embassy bombing came flooding back,” she says, “It was like I was reliving the nightmare again. I began wishing that I had not gone to the scene,” she said.