Struggling for ‘Courage to Cope,’ Mourners Bury Kenyans Killed in Blast

Under a towering eucalyptus tree, Alice Nduta Gachiri’s two daughters stood straight and tall Saturday as they remembered their mother as a “jolly, generous, sympathetic and welcoming person” whose life was abruptly ripped from her by a terrorist bomb.

In a cemetery on Nairobi’s outskirts, with Gachiri’s body lying front and center in a closed coffin before a crowd of several hundred mourners, 12-year-old Grace Christine Wakanyi and 10-year-old Maryanne Wambui called her death “cruel, brutal and senseless” and, speaking clearly and firmly, their voices joined as one, closed by saying, “We shall miss our dear mother greatly.” Many in the crowd began to weep.

With tears and sorrow, with bewilderment and anger, Kenyans buried their dead Saturday in the red African soil. U.S. investigators, meanwhile, continued to sift through rubble but offered no clues to who caused the Aug. 7 bomb blasts outside U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 250 people.

Ten of the dead were killed in Tanzania, outside the embassy in Dar es Salaam. The others, including 12 Americans, were victims of a car bomb that exploded at the rear of the embassy in Nairobi. More than 5,000 people were injured at both sites.

In Tanzania, police said Saturday that they had released 12 of the 14 foreigners they had arrested earlier in the week. Director of Criminal Investigations Rajabu Adadi said that the other two were not being held as prime suspects in the bombing there.

President Clinton offered condolences to the citizens of Kenya and Tanzania, telling them “we grieve together,” in a special videotaped address that was broadcast in the two East African nations.

Americans “cherish our friendship with your peoples,” the president said. “Violent extremists try to use bullets and bombs to derail our united efforts to bring peace to every part of the Earth. But I am proud that our nations have also renewed our commitment to stand together.”

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will leave Monday on a two-day trip to Tanzania and then Kenya, where she will review the status of the bombing investigations, inspect the blast sites and meet with rescue workers and victims.

The first shipments of evidence culled from the wreckage of the bombings were expected to arrive at FBI laboratories in Washington sometime over the weekend.

In Kenya, meanwhile, with most of the victims finally identified, attention turned to honoring the dead.

The day’s newspapers were jammed with death announcements. The East African Standard, for one, devoted three full pages to black-bordered testimonials.

Funerals are due to continue for several more days, perhaps even weeks--many of the victims having hailed from outlying villages where their bodies will be returned for burial.

Depending on tribe and ethnicity, funerals in Kenya can be lengthy, protracted affairs laden with emotion, as the life--and death--of the deceased is reviewed. And so it was for Alice Gachiri, 36, a government clerk who was killed while working on the third floor of the Cooperative Bank House, a high-rise that soars over the parking lot where the car bomb went off.

The ceremonies began at a Nairobi funeral home, where the body could be viewed. Then the funeral party piled into cars for a 20-minute trip to Langata Cemetery, on the outskirts of town.

There, several sets of loudspeakers were set up so that the hundreds of mourners could hear the prayers and tributes to Gachiri--which were offered in both English and Swahili.

*

Friends, relatives and Gachiri’s employer offered glowing eulogies. Her boss, Philemon Elisha Mwaisaka, an Agriculture Ministry official, traced her civil service career from her start as a typist in 1982 through her last job, on a World Bank coffee project. He called her “diligent, disciplined, respectful and conscientious” and “one of the best secretaries we ever had.”

Her two daughters followed him to the microphone.

Gachiri was the oldest of four children, the only daughter. Grace, the 12-year-old, said her mother was brought up “in a Christian home” and taught her daughters “the same Christian values.”

On “the fateful morning,” Grace said, her father, 46-year-old Mwangi Gachiri, an auto parts importer, dropped her mother off at work. About 10:30 a.m., the bomb exploded.

The main force of the explosion roared into the embassy, into the building next door, called the Ufundi Cooperative House, and into the Cooperative Bank tower next to that.

Three miles away, Mwangi Gachiri heard a huge boom. Alarmed, he ran the entire way to the scene. “I couldn’t believe my eyes,” he said later Saturday. “Then I got too much worried because I couldn’t locate my wife.”

Mwaisaka also arrived at the site. Later, they were joined by two of Alice Gachiri’s brothers, 33-year-old Peter Njao, a hotelier, and 32-year-old Edward Chege, who works in an insurance company.

In vain, they visited a number of local hospitals, running from one to another, staying up all night to search for her.

The next day, at the city mortuary, they found her body, Grace said.

Grace’s younger sister then took over the microphone. Let us pray, Maryanne said to the crowd, asking for “the courage to cope and the peace that is beyond human understanding.”

When the girls were done speaking and a minister had finished preaching, Gachiri’s coffin was laid in the ground. Maryanne, who had remained so composed throughout, wept silently into a kerchief.

Afterward, as vendors moved through the crowd selling sweets, sodas and ice cream, Mwangi Gachiri, suddenly a widower with two girls to raise by himself, was asked if he too was angry. Yes, he said. At whom? he was asked. The United States, he said.

“I would advise them to move that [embassy] from that town,” he said, meaning out to the suburbs, far from Nairobi’s central district. A wire service report Saturday, citing newspapers in Uganda, said that the U.S. Embassy there had been relocated from the center of the capital, Kampala, to a new location two miles away and that the reason for the move was the bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

Gachiri, meantime, hastened to add that he was more sad than angry--and, as well, more than a bit bewildered that his wife was dead. He said: “She was kind, a joy. She was really caring.” He tried again: “She was a really loving wife, that’s all I can say.”

Only a sustaining faith, he said, was keeping him going. “I believe in God,” he said. “That’s why I’m here.”

Times staff writer Robert A. Rosenblatt in Washington contributed to this report.