Hold your hearses: How bills and land disputes are choking mortuaries

For almost ten years, the body of Peter Kinyanjui lay at the Kigumo Hospital mortuary as family members fought over a two-acre piece of land, unmoved by a Sh 2.7 million bill that would later confront them.

Kinyanjui was finally buried on December 6, 2015, after Kiambu Governor William Kabogo waived the mortuary bill.

Before he died, Kinyanjui had been embroiled in a court battle after his nephew, George Ndegwa, insisted the land in Kiriko village, Gatundu South, belonged to his father.

Kinyanjui went to court but before the case was concluded, he died in May, 2006. Ndegwa got a court order restraining, Kinyanjui’s close relatives from burying him on the disputed piece of land.

The accruing bill forced the family to temporarily put aside their differences and bury the old man as the case continues in court. Kinyanjui’s daughter-in-law Mercy Njoki lamented that the family could not afford to pay the soaring mortuary bill.

It is Kiambu County Civic Coordinator Charles Njoroge who intervened, saving the family from the financial burden. Njoroge approached Kabogo, highlighting to the governor, Kinyanjui’s family dilemma.

“We felt we had to intervene to save the family from mental anguish since they have been living on the land for 50 years,” Njoroge said during the funeral.

An agreement to bury the man at a public cemetery was disowned by Kiriko villagers who quickly buried Kinyanjui at his homestead, insisting the piece of land belonged to him.

Assistant chief John Kiiru was roughed up when he tried to stop the burial. Meanwhile, the deceased’s widow, Joyce Mendi, immediately applied for adverse rights of the land.

Land disputes aside, pending bills are another reason many cases grieving families are unable to bury loved ones for months and sometimes years. 

Some Kenyan communities also don’t bury infants and minors because of cultural beliefs. Given the slow uptake of cremation as an alternative disposal method, many public mortuaries are piled with remains that have been ‘lying in state’ for donkey years.

In January, the High Court ordered a city hospital and funeral home to release a man’s body that they have been holding for three months over a Sh17.5 million bill. Karen Hospital and Montezuma Monalisa Funeral Home were ordered to unconditionally release the body of Freddy Nyageiro for burial. The 37-year-old was a casual labourer based in Nakuru.

He fell ill on August 4, 2015 and was taken to the hospital for treatment where he remained admitted until November. “We took him to hospital where he was examined and was diagnosed with pancreas complications,” Mary Nyaigero, the deceased’s mother, recounted to the press at the time.

The debt accrued as Nyaigero remained bedridden at the intensive care unit before succumbing to his illness on November 6, 2015. His family moved to court, seeking to have the hospital compelled to release the body from the funeral home.

The family opted to go to court because it could not raise the amount, neither was it ready to continue agonizing as Nyaigero’s body lay in the morgue.

“I am 65-years-old and have eight children. The truth is, I have no ability to raise the millions and I am therefore appealing for help,” pleaded the mother.

Further afield and close to two years now, the body of Beatrice Syokau Kathumba has been lying at the Machakos Funeral Home as her close relatives walk from one office to another seeking justice and the right to lay their kin to rest.

The 89-year-old granny was allegedly kidnapped, held in captivity for four years and dumped in hospital when her health deteriorated. And after her death on July 3, 2014, people suspected to have grabbed most of her 48-hectare piece of land in Embakasi have prevented her burial unless they are recognised as the de facto beneficiaries of the prime property estimated to run into billions of shillings.

Syokau’s daughters, Litha Kathumba and Amina Mbula Kathumba, have unsuccessfully tried to bury their mother.

The last time they attempted to bury Syokau at her Mathunya home, Mitaboni Location in Machakos County, hired goons disrupted the function, forcing mourners to flee as the hoodlums demolished two houses. Three suspects were charged in connection with the incident.

Speaking from Machakos Police Station on April 13, Syokau’s family members said the dispute had exhausted them mentally and financially.

Litha Kathumba claimed those blocking the burial of their mother were interested in the property she left behind. Litha and her younger sister Joyce accompanied by a human rights activist had gone to the Station to seek protection.

“We have suffered a lot and pray that the body be released so that we can bury our mother. Those opposed to her burial are not our blood relatives,” said Litha Kathumba.

Matters get even more complicated when two wives are involved in a burial dispute.

When Embu OCPD Nathan Nyange Mwangemi died in May 2015, a protracted legal battle ensued between two of his feuding wives over the right to bury the senior officer.

Nyange’s burial in Mwabwalo village, Wundanyi, was interrupted by a court order obtained by one of the widows, Lily Chemtai Chemweno, when the deceased’s other wife Agnes Mwero Nyamvula and two other women laid claim to it.

The body was kept at Pandya Hospital in Mombasa as the women battled in courts. The medical and mortuary fee rose to Sh1.2 million, forcing the family to seek support to raise funds to offset the huge mortuary bill after the court released the body last month.

In May 2011, parliament abolished fees in public mortuaries in a bid to remove the financial burden from the poor. Then Maragwa MP Elias Mbau successful sponsored the motion, arguing that the bills were prohibitive for people who survived on less than Sh100 a day.

Even after the passage of the motion, many bodies lie in public morgues remain uncollected over uncleared bills and unresolved land disputes. In some circumstances, families deliberately abandon their kin in morgues, especially minors. Other bodies just remain unclaimed, because they have not been identified positively.

For instance, City Mortuary with a capacity to hold 160 bodies is frequently overstretched. On a daily basis, gunfire and accident victims are taken there. The situation becomes worse when disasters strike.

The problem is not confined to Nairobi. Last year, there was an outcry in Kisii, Bomet, Nyamira and Migori counties over congestion of mortuaries as a result of unclaimed bodies, some of which had stayed for more than two years. Nyamira County Referral Hospital asked the court to let them bury the bodies.

So pathetic is the situation that the government is assessing the status of all public morgues with a view of improving on capacity and level of forensics.

The Ministry of health, for instance, improved capacity at the Mpeketoni Mortuary following the  June 2014 terrorist attack in the town that left the gravely facility overstretched with bodies of those killed by suspected Al Shabaab militia.

While the law makes it an offense for any person to illegally prevent the burial of a dead body by the next of kin, hardly a week goes by before a violent dispute is reported. By the time courts resolve the disputes years, even decades later, the dead are long forgotten.