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Sometimes it takes a long time for the truth to come out.
For people to come to terms with it and for the bureaucracy to clear it.
Here are one man’s three such tales of pain and patriotism dating back to November 28, 2002, when police fought al Shabaab terrorists in Mombasa.
Multiple scars on his head and chest are a stark reminder of how Corporal Robert Omwoha had fought the terrorists during his posting at the Coast.
Omwoha, attached to DCI’s Anti-Terror Police Unit, almost paid the ultimate price when the terrorists he and his colleagues had arrested at Likoni in Mombasa, hurled grenades at them.
One GSU colleague lost his life, while Omwoha suffered head and chest injuries.
According to the DCI magazine released on Tuesday, Omwoha still has shrapnel lodged on the right side of his lungs and in his shoulders.
He’ll have to live with the metal because he could not survive surgery to remove it.
HOW IT HAPPENED
On November 28, 2002, al Shabaab targeted both the Israeli-owned Paradise Hotel in Kikambala and an airliner belonging to Arkia Airlines taking off from Moi International Airport.
On that day, an all-terrain vehicle loaded with explosives exploded killing 13 and injuring 80 other people.
It was this attack and many more at the Coast that caused Corporal Omwoha his visible scars and no doubt more we cannot see.
Since 2012, he has spent most of his time fighting death in hospitals in a wheelchair, walking with crutches or grounded in the house.
Omwoha, from Essongolo village in Vihiga county, says he’s happy to remain alive.
“Everyday I wake up feeling more healed than the previous day. The Lord has been working miracles in my life. My life was completely changed by the grenade attacks,” he was quoted by DCI magazine as saying.
In his first brush with death, Omwoha and his colleagues were injured by grenades hurled by terrorists they had arrested in Likoni.
He blacked out and suddenly seethed in pain in the two blasts at Majengo Mapya in Timbwani village.
The explosion from the first grenade ripped his chest while the second disfigured his face.
In 2012, Omwoha received a call from his boss that he needed to arrest a group of terrorists in a security operation.
“I had spent the whole day doing office work and never had time for lunch. At 4pm I told my boss I was going home, hoping to have a meal there,” he recalls.
But before he could remove his key from his pocket, his boss told him he was needed at the site to join a team of officers from Recce and ATPU who had come from Nairobi for an operation.
The officer went to the Chaani chief’s office in Changamwe to meet his colleagues.
“I was only armed with a pistol and handcuffs and was fighting hunger pangs. I immediately turned and passed my wife’s grocery to inform her I was going for an operation,” he said.
The corporal found four ATPU officers and others from NIS waiting for him.
At around 10pm the officers proceeded to Mikanjuni in Changamwe where they stormed a house and found a man and a pregnant woman.
They searched the house and found two grenades concealed in a woman’s handbag.
They also found a pistol loaded with eight rounds of ammunition and one AK-47 rifle bullet.
“The officers arrested the duo and was informed that the woman was the wife of a colleague and that they had gone for a terror attack but the plans aborted when they got wind of police.”
The two were arrested after the man said they were with two other men who were not in the vicinity.
Omwoha and the other officers walked the suspect up to another house where the two men lived.
“He said he did not have the key to the gate. I had used my handcuffs and I was holding the suspect. When we reached the gate, he called out some names and requested they open the gate. One of the men behind the gate demanded to know who they were,” he said.
But the two men who were asking questions from behind the gate were the same ones who had earlier fled from the place they planned to attack.
“We heard the gate lock click open but the two men used their bodies to keep the gate firmly shut. I whipped out my pistol and pointed it at the two men. As we were struggling to force the gate open, I heard something drop on our feet. I sensed danger,” he said.
“Before any of us could figure out what had been dropped. I felt my body turn numb. There was a feeling of shock running through my chest. That was when I realised there was an explosion and my chest had been ripped off.”
Omwoha said in the confusion, the handcuffed suspect slipped away.
“I woke up and saw that I had a gaping wound, I told my colleagues to remain silent since I felt that there could be more attackers lurking in the darkness,” he said.
The second near fatal incident happened on March 10, 2020.
The corporal had been transferred to the ATPU office after he had partially recovered.
On this day, he was riding a police motorcycle on the Kisumu-Busia highway heading to Busia town to gather intelligence on a terror cell when a truck veered from its lane and smashed into him and other road users.
“He woke up from a coma several days later in ICU at Tanaka Nursing Hospital,” the DCI said.
Omwoha who has a wife and seven children, underwent multiple surgeries and got more than 250 stitches,
“The deep scars on my face, chest and legs tell my painful story,” he said. They remind me of the two near encounters with death and how God saved my life.”
(Edited by V. Graham)
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