Bin Laden – Muruiki Can Finally Wipe Away His Tears

Monitor Correspondent

4 May 2011

opinion

For 10 years, twice a week, Charles Muriuki has come to the same spot in downtown Nairobi to grieve and reflect. Each time, he sits on a park bench at a simple memorial and remembers his mother.

“My mom left home at 10 in the morning that day, and she never came back. Never ever,” Muriuki says.

Muriuki’s mother had gone to deposit money at a bank next to the US embassy. At 10.30am on August 7, 1998, terrorists detonated a bomb housed in a truck at the entrance to the embassy.

The powerful blast ripped through the five-storey building and partially destroyed the neighbouring office tower. A few moments earlier, a similar attack occurred at the US embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Hundreds were killed in the attacks and thousands left injured. Most were just ordinary folks going about their business. Muriuki’s family only found his mother’s body after three days in a mortuary. She was disfigured and barely recognisable.

Mary Muriuki was the pillar of the family. She left eight children and a husband. Shattered by the loss, Muruiki started to drink. Charles Muriuki came to blame just one person for their troubles: Osama bin Laden.

“Life since then has been different and all the time I was hearing ‘Osama, Osama, Osama,'” he says. “Finally, the day has come. This should be a warning to all of them out there. Justice will always prevail.”

As soon as Muriuki heard that bin Laden had been killed he rushed straight to the memorial, at the site where the U.S. embassy once stood. He sat in the same spot he always sits. Somehow, his family moved past their tragedy. But now, he says, he has closure.

“God gave me the strength to endure,” he says. “Finally, here I am: I am a married man. I am a father of two and I have seen Osama going six-feet under. I am happy and I feel comforted.”

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