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Vicious rape, murder quashes campus girl’s dreams

charity maina
 Charity Maina was a student at Moi University

The last post on Charity Maina’s Facebook account was a tribute to her late father, promising to work hard and make him proud.

That was never to be. On Sunday February 22, she was discovered dead at 6am, dry blood encrusted around her, clothes carelessly discarded on her nude, lifeless body, provoking national outrage.

The third-year Moi University student, a gifted pianist with the university Christian Union (CU), staunch believer, and a kind, charitable young woman, had met an unkind end. According to police, she was violated by a gang.

Her roommate, Immaculate Kimoli, is still numb with disbelief. She says that she had planned to meet Charity after the CU fellowship, only to see her dead hours later.

“I saw her last at 2pm in the library,” recalls Immaculate. “We chatted on phone that evening till 8:30pm. If all had gone to plan, we would have met outside the library and headed to our room together.”

Immaculate says that when she left fellowship at 10pm and called Charity from outside the library, her phone went unanswered.

She called again, then headed to their room where she tried calling a third time and, assuming that Charity had gone to see a mutual friend, retired to bed. But the next morning, she heard commotion and a few minutes walk from their hostel lay Charity, brown bag stuffed with books and Bible in the open, dead.

“There was no noise that night, no commotion, not even a scream. I would have heard it. No one heard a thing,” she said.

Charity’s closest university friend, Caroline Mukami, was too distraught to speak to The Nairobian. “Please don’t question me; please,” pleaded Caroline in a teary voice.

Charity and Immaculate lived within the gates of the institution in Mbuka Hostel in an area called ‘Stage,’ off campus administration and class buildings.

Retired Eldoret police superintendent, Charles Jamanda, who is the university’s security chief, says, “Stage is not part of our jurisdiction. It is within the community neighbouring the university, but which we still patrol. Policemen also carry out patrols in this area daily. In fact, it is my security team that found her body.”

Stage, however, has hostels like Comfort, Achievers and Blue Gate, which have since been bought by the university from private developers and listed on the university’s hostel booking portal online.

Jamanda says there are no plans to outsource security to a private firm and that the watchmen hail from villages surrounding the university.

But according to students, the local community besieged the university and shut the gate for two days in June last year when plans to engage a private security firm leaked, saying the move would deny them jobs.

Charity’s brutal rape is not the first such incident within the institution though. Between 2008 and 2011, an armed assailant nicknamed ‘Mashoka’ sent shivers down every spine.

Close to six students fell victim to the panga man, although none, fortunately, died. Mwang’ombe Mwambeo, one of the victims who later became Chair of the students’ union, says he wrestled the attacker to the ground one evening but he escaped into the bushes, leaving a metal bar and torch behind.

The following year, four students were attacked in four separate incidents in the university.

From his meetings with fellow leaders, Mwambeo said they agreed that ‘Pita Mashoka’ was a well-organised legion of sadists who were familiar with the university’s layout.

The university does not have a perimeter wall apart from a roughly 30m long gate and wall. Within the school, barbed wire and chain link fences demarcate different areas but no perimeter wall clearly marks out the university’s land.

A roundabout near the university dispensary is linked to a dirt road heading to Chebaiwo village. It is not fenced.

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