Woman in Kisumu confuses lift for coffin ferrying dead bodies

By MAUREEN ODIWUOR

A woman fascinated a crowd in Kisumu after mistaking a lift for a coffin carrying dead people from the ground to heaven.

The woman, in her mid 50s who stays in Dunga area of Kisumu Town rarely goes to town because she gets most of what she needs within the estate.

The woman, who recalled visiting the town centre ten years ago, said she sends her children on errands within Kisumu Central Business District, and did not find it necessary to go on her own. On this particular day, she was in the company of her co-wife who had come to seek funds from an organisation, where their husband who passed on six months ago, used to work.

They boarded a boda boda and alighted next to a local university campus within the town.

They made a phone call to a relative who was to guide them to the relevant office to process their late husband’s cash. While waiting for their next move, the woman noticed something unusual in the university building.

The institution building has a lift facing the road, which is transparent and visible from outside the building. The woman, who has never been exposed to such technology more so a modern building, stood in shock, monitoring the movement of the lift as it went down, picked people took them up and vice-versa.

“Atimo ang’o majomotho mang’eny chiena yawa (What have I done to deserve being haunted by many dead people)?” she asked loudly thinking that evil forces were tormenting her.

This shocked her co-wife who asked what she meant, but before she could answer, she burst into tears screaming on top of her voice oblivious of the crowd she was attracting.

Bizarre

Ashamed, her co-wife angrily demanded that she gives an explanation to the bizarre scene she was creating.

“Can’t you see those dead people, some being ferried to heaven and others to the grave?” she said pointing towards the building. The crowd that had gathered was left in confusion trying to decipher what she meant because they neither saw a coffin nor dead people in the building.

The woman even went as far as blaming her late husband for exposing her to mental torture by exposing her to the world and activities of the dead.

“Onyango before you died, I never saw dead people; why are you exposing me to torture yet you’re the one who brought the disease that killed you?” she continued. It took a man in the crowd to understand what she meant after he observed the lift where the woman was pointing for sometime, then burst into laughter.

“That is not a coffin mama relax! He said pointing towards the lift to the amusement of all that had gathered to watch her.

Still not understanding what a lift was, people in the crowd tried to explain to her what its purpose is and even went ahead to demonstrate to her what they meant.

Two people in the crowd volunteered to take her to the building and assisted her use the facility, which left her awed as she wondered how she could have gone inside a coffin and come out alive! “Adwaro bet dot com, wach mar siko wiya dunga aweyo (I want to become a dot com person, I will stop wasting myself in Dunga and come to town more often for exposure),” she said.