Three months after the burial of founding father Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya Defense Forces team exhumed his body and took it to City mortuary.
In his book, In pursuit of peace in Africa, Lieutenant General (Rtd) Daniel Opande recalls how he received a unique call from Army Commander Jackson Mulinge, over the delicate exercise.
Them serving as a staff at DoD, Lt Gen Opande, was not sure why the was asked to have the body exhumed and taken to city mortuary.
Mr Opande, who has had a colourful career in the military, says that three months after Mzee Kenyatta’s burial he was called by the Army Commander, Gen Jackson Mulinge, and asked to “heighten security around the mausoleum and to be ready to arrange for a military ambulance to take the casket containing the body of Mzee to the City Mortuary”.
The man who was to lead the exhumation exercise was Kenyatta’s physician, Dr Eric Mwangola, who was also the Director of Medical Services.
Dr Mwangola and Dr Njoroge Mungai, Kenyatta's nephew, were the only trusted physicians to the old man when he was alive.
A source in the Kenyatta family confirmed that the family members knew about the exercise — and that it has happened “twice or thrice” ever since, for “cleaning up”.
The body was to be taken from parliament buildings for embalming, a professional exercise that leads to proper preservation of the corpse.
In his book, the first time the matter has been brought to the public, Mr Opande says there was some sense of urgency in Gen Mulinge’s call.
“I could detect the sombre urgency in his voice as he stressed that the whole operation had to be completed by the following evening. I assured him that I understood his instructions and would comply.”
Mr Opande explains that the casket was removed by military officers and loaded into a waiting ambulance. It was hastily taken to the mortuary for treatment.
“On arrival at the mortuary,” Lt-Gen Opande recalls, “We transferred the casket inside. The pathologist, Dr Rao, and his assistants who were on standby quickly opened the casket and carefully removed the body and placed it on a large table draped with a clean white sheet. I watched carefully as they cleaned the remains that appeared very well-preserved.”
“Within an hour, the body was placed back into the casket for transportation back to the mausoleum. Later that night, my task accomplished, I called Gen Mulinge and informed him of the success of our mission,” he writes in the book published last week by East African Educational Publishers.
Last week, President Uhuru Kenyatta stopped public commemorations of Mzee Kenyatta, arguing that everyone will now remember in his or her own ways.
Opande served as Army Commander later on before being posted to Liberia, Sierra Leone, Namibia among other war raged countries for peace keeping around the world.