By Robert Wanyonyi, May 27 2009
If everything had gone according to her kidnapper’s plan, Ms Esther Nayale, 38, would have been sacrificed in a ritual killing last week.
Nayale, who was drugged and kidnapped in Nairobi while on her way to Mombasa, could have met her death in Webuye, hundreds of kilometres away from her Maralal home, Samburu District.
At Matungu Hospital in Mumias, where she is undergoing treatment for serious burns on the back, Nayale said last week’s events are still unfolding in her mind like a nightmare.
But she says lady luck was on her side if the way she emerged from her harrowing ordeal is anything to go by.
"The only thing I remember clearly right is that I was heading to a Coast Bus booking office in Nairobi for a ticket to travel to Mombasa on May 15.
Strange Place
But four days later, I woke up to find myself in a strange place. I later learnt the place was near Webuye town.
I woke up in pain, my back burnt by something very hot. I later learnt I might have been targeted for black magic ritual, which somehow did not succeed," says Nayale.
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Ms Esther Nayale, 38, of Maralal, Samburu, at Matungu Hospital in Butere-Mumias District, yesterday. [PHOTO: Benjamin Sakwa/STANDARD] |
She thinks she was drugged as she took the soda although she cannot remember how and then transported to western Kenya in circumstances she cannot explain.
Screamed for help
"I woke up in a dimly-lit room. I suspect I was seated on a boiling pot because my back was burning. What looked like weird paraphernalia were strewn all around me," she recalls and still seems shaken.
Nayale says: "I came back to my senses and started screaming. I was burning and the smell of burning flesh had engulfed the room. I screamed for help and an old woman came into the small room."
She told me to shut up and added that I was in Webuye and that nothing was going to happen to me. She said she had forgiven me since I had committed no crime; that I was abducted by mistake and was not the one who was to be taken to her for a ritual she did not explain.
Nayale said the old woman held her hand, jerked her off the steaming pot and helped her to stand up. Her backside was in severe pain and she knew she had been badly burnt.
Collapsed in shock
"I then felt pain similar to that a woman feels when she gives birth. Something had been pushed into my private parts and it was making me feel as if I was in labour. The old woman pulled it out and I saw it was my mobile phone. She said she would take me to hospital for treatment. Then I collapsed," she explains.
Nayale said a vehicle was brought and after a journey that she estimated to have taken two hours, she was taken into a sugar-cane plantation and told to lie down.
"The woman told me I was innocent and she wanted to revoke an evil spell that she had cast on me. She made me lie down on the grass and I think I passed out again. I woke up about two hours later to find the woman and the male driver had vanished," Nayale claimed.
Barely managing to stand on her feet, the badly injured Nayale says she crawled to a road and saw two men chewing sugar cane.
Good samaritans
"I asked them where I was and they told me I was near Mumias. After I narrated my ordeal, they were sympathetic and took me to Mumias Police Station from where the officers brought me to hospital," she said.
A sobbing Nayale says she does not know who put her through such suffering.
But she remembers receiving some threatening SMS messages on her mobile phone in the previous two weeks from a person who accused her of having an affair with her husband.
Mumias OCPD Samuel Kosgey confirmed that Nayale was kidnapped, drugged and dumped near Mumias and that investigation had started into the weird incident.
On the fateful day, Nayale was to travel to Mombasa to meet a US pilot who had been sent with some money for her by a relative abroad.
Doctors at Matungu Hospital said the burns on her back were serious, but manageable. Hospital Medical Officer-in-Charge Isaac Mukhwana said they had heavily sedated her because she was still in shock.
Dr Mukhwana said Nayale needed specialised treatment and post-traumatic counselling to recover fully.
Rural Women and Children Rights Awareness Centre Programme Officer Elizabeth Efiketi has appealed to wellwishers to come to Nayale’s help.
Source: Standard'KIKUYU MIND'
A KIKUYU man walks into a bank in NAIROBI City and asks for the loan officer. He tells the loan officer that he is going to DUBAI on business for two weeks and needs to borrow KSH 5,000. The bank officer tells him that the bank will need some form of security for the loan, so the KIKUYU man hands over the keys to a new Ferrari parked on the street in front of the bank. He produces the title and everything checks out.
The loan officer agrees to accept the car as collateral for the loan. The bank's president and its officers ( luo) all enjoy a good laugh at the KIKUYU for using a KSH 250,000 Ferrari as collateral against a KSH 5,000 loan. An employee of the bank then drives the Ferrari into the bank's underground garage and parks it there. Two weeks later, the KIKUYU returns, repays the KSH 5,000 and the interest,which comes to KSH 150.41.
The loan officer says, 'Sir, we are very happy to have had your business, and this transaction has worked out very nicely but we are a little puzzled. While you were away, we checked you out and found that you are a multi millionaire. What puzzles us is, why would you bother to borrow 'KSH 5,000' The KIKUYU replies: 'Where else in NAIROBI can I park my car for two weeks for only KSH 150.41 and expect it to be there when I return''
Ah, the mind of the KIKUYU ...
Austrian sicko fathered 7 kids with daughterAMSTETTEN, Austria, April 29 2008 - Members of the Austrian family victimized by a man who imprisoned his daughter for 24 years and fathered seven children with her have had an "astonishing" meeting, officials said Tuesday. Authorities said the daughter, most of her children whom suspect Josef Fritzl fathered through incest, and Fritzl's wife met each other Sunday morning at a clinic where they have been getting psychiatric treatment and counseling. "It was astonishing how easily it happened - how the mother and grandmother came together," clinic director Berthold Kepplinger told reporters Tuesday. Kepplinger said the family members interacted very naturally - even though the three children who lived upstairs with the grandparents had never met their siblings in the windowless cell. Officials said one of the children who is receiving medical treatment at another hospital was not part of the gathering. Word of the reunion came as police announced that DNA tests confirmed Fritzl is the biological father of the six surviving children he had with his daughter. Police also said they combed through Fritzl's other properties but found no other hidden windowless cells like the one where he had held his daughter - now 42 - captive since she was 18. Police said Fritzl confessed Monday to holding the daughter captive, sexually abusing her, fathering her children and tossing the body of one child who died in infancy into a furnace. More>>> |
 Austrian sicko, Fritzl fathered 7 children with his own daughter imprisoned in a dungeon for 24 years. As far as horror stories go, this ranks topost. |
 Inside the dungeon of horror where Austrian sicko held daughter captive for 24 years as hus sex slave |
Woman found trapped by dead husband's body
ST. LOUIS (AP), April 30 2008 -- Newspaper carrier Bruce Pitts knew the elderly couple only by the prayers the wife made for him while he was working at night and in bad weather, but he felt something was wrong when the papers piled up outside their home.
"It was never like them to leave a newspaper in their tube," Pitt said Tuesday. "That wonderful, small voice inside me said, `This isn't right."'
After his route early Sunday, Pitts went home, napped briefly and, with his wife, returned to Blanche and Fred Roberts' home, just outside Marion, Ill.
They repeatedly rang the doorbells but got no answer. Pitts then eased open an unlocked side door and saw the couple about two feet inside, 84-year-old Blanche Roberts helpless looking right back at Pitts.
Her right leg was pinned beneath the body of her 77-year-old husband Fred, who apparently had died last Wednesday evening of a heart attack after mowing the lawn.
"The good Lord was with her. She was not scared, wasn't panicking," Pitts said during a telephone interview. "She was conscious, talking. Just peaceful. It was remarkable."
Her only request was for water. She knew her name and her relatives, but described her husband as "sleeping," said Pitts, who delivers the Southern Illinoisan, published in nearby Carbondale, Ill.
Pitts described Blanche Roberts as frail and petite. Fred Roberts was a "good-sized man," according to Williamson County, Ill., coroner Mike Burke, though he declined to be specific.
The coronoer said Fred Roberts likely died of a heart attack, based on accounts from the Roberts' visitors that day.
"They said he was really beet-red in the face, that he didn't look good," Burke said.
Blanche Roberts was taken to a hospital in nearby Herrin. The hospital on Tuesday wouldn't confirm whether she still was being treated there; Pitts said the couple's relatives told his wife Monday that she was doing fine.
Pitts has delivered on that route for three years but said he never met the Robertses before Sunday. But he thinks fondly of Blanche Roberts, who often tipped him in letters and was known to Pitts and his wife as "The Prayer Lady."
In her missives, "Blanche would say, `I've been praying for you at night whenever the weather's bad, realizing you're out in it delivering our papers,"' Pitts said. "We'd always say a little prayer back."
Balunda clan in Bungoma bury the dead standing
By Paul Sifuna Oshule, Michigan, Dec 6 2007
Traditions are rarely disputed in much of the world. But it's at the centre of controversy among one ethnic group in Kenya. The Balunda clan of the Bukusu tribe in Bungoma district buries its deceased in an upright sitting position. They say it is their tradition. But a group of people from the same clan – as well as some critics across the country call the practice “cult-like”.
One of the reasons used to explain the practice is that being propped up in a sitting posture enables the deceased to rise up instantly on the day he or she is summoned by God. Questions have been raised on how possible it would be to sit a dead person up after rigor mortis has set in. Michael Masinde, the cousin to the deceased says that one has to “convince” the dead because they listen.
"We have to speak to the deceased in a low tone to make them understand that we still love them and should agree with our requests and cultural practices, otherwise it would be difficult to make them sit in the coffin because of the hard bones and joints," he says.
Vincent Khamala, a 70-year-old who belongs to the same clan and has lived in the area all his life, says that the quaint custom is just a matter of fulfilling what the forefathers introduced."The reason we bury our people in a sitting position," he says," is because the first man to die many years ago in the clan was found dead in a sitting position and we just thought the whole clan should follow suit.
We cannot break the cycle just because we are in the modern world."
However, not all the clan members fancy the practice as they see it as old-fashioned and cult-like. Those who go against it are considered outcasts and become isolated. Jairus Khaemba is one of the clan members who despise it.
"We are part of the clan but we don't engage in that kind of practice because our grand parents and parents were very devout Christians and found it backward and ungodly so we will always be buried lying stretched out as we have previously been doing."
Some proud clan members want the clan to popularise the practice throughout Kenya and use it as an identity. They say the extraordinary way of burial could be a tourist attraction and a heritage to be envied by the rest of the world. The Kenyan constitution does not have a national burial law and therefore such a practice cannot be prohibited because customary law is given a special place due to different existing tribes in the country. Analysts however say that given the current trend where people intermarry, perhaps it would be in the national interest to create a uniform burial law to avoid subjecting other people to unacceptable practices.
Iteso exhume the dead after 5 years
By Isaiah Lucheli
The Iteso of western Kenya have a way of handling their dead that would horrify many other people in the world. About five years after burial, they exhume the skulls and skeletons and leave them exposed to the elements. The result is that if you travel through Teso country, you will get the impression that a major archeological undertaking is underway.
In homesteads and in thickets, the skulls lie exposed in a custom the community believes allows the dead to rest better than if they were six feet underground. Apart from allowing the dead a good rest, the custom is also intended to keep them from coming back to torment the living.
The Iteso believe that once human remains are exhumed and exposed, the dead will no longer be able to haunt the living through nightmares, sickness, or other afflictions. The remains are placed on raised ground covered by shrubbery within the compound or at the base of a tree, where there is little interference.
Millet beer, locally known as Ajono, is regularly sprinkled over the site to appease the dead. What remain is ceremonially consumed by elders. The custom is slightly different among their cousins across the border in Uganda. Among the Soroti, who are closely related to the Iteso, the bones of the dead, the arm to be exact, are used to stir the brew, which is then consumed.
According to Iteso customs, the exhumed remains must be placed within the farm of the deceased, because the dead are bound to resist and cause difficulties if they are taken away. Children are warned not to touch or even go near the place where the bones have been put to rest. Children who play with these skulls risk falling very ill, and can only be healed if elders intervene and perform a specific ritual.
This involves slaughtering a sheep for the dead and serving them a traditional brew to beg for forgiveness on behalf of the ailing child. Okisai Okiring of Chakol Division in Teso District says the exhumation rite, known as epunyas, is conducted to stop the dead from tormenting the living. “It’s a belief among the Iteso that the dead are full of evil spirits. They strongly affect the lives of the living through diseases and other calamities,” he says.
Okiring says if the dead are not appeased by bringing them back to earth’s surface, they are capable of wiping out the entire community. “This rite is done to please the dead. If not done, a series of tragedies could strike and wipe out the whole community,” he says.
He says exhuming makes the dead more friendly to the living, and in this way killer diseases and other misfortunes are avoided. The elder observes that epunyas also gives the dead an opportunity to oversee the daily activities of the living. Laurence Ochodi of Amagoro village in Teso says epunyas is usually done five or 10 years after burial.
“We believe that after being in the grave for five to 10 years, the dead get tired and so we remove them from the choking grave and leave them in open air to rest,” says Ochodi. He adds: “When we bring the dead on the surface, they literally exist among us, they see what we do because they are part us and therefore have no reason to torment us.”
The ceremony is conducted across the board for the young and old, men and women. It is done in December after millet has been harvested. A lot of millet beer is brewed and animals slaughtered to celebrate this important Iteso cultural activity. Only elderly people are allowed at the graveside during the exhumation, which takes place at night. The Iteso are not the only community in Western Kenya with unusual customs regarding the dead.
Last year, many mourners were surprised when Cabinet minister Musikari Kombo’s brother was buried seated in a coffin designed like a cupboard. Dignitaries, including President Mwai Kibaki, watched in disbelief as the coffin was lowered in an upright position into a specially designed grave. That is how the Balunda clan of the Bukusu community bury their dead, adding an entirely new dimension to the concept of burial.
They believe death is not a sign of defeat or conquest, but is a form of relaxation. To them, the dead are simply taking a rest from physical activities but continue to oversee the activities of their families and the community at large. There is therefore need for them to remain vigilant in a sitting position. Members of the community are buried in this manner regardless of the sex, age or status to enable them continue directing the activities of the living.
The Balunda people believe that this is the only way to ensure that the elders continue occupying their revered positions from where they can direct and counsel the living. Respected elders are given the responsibility of supervising the burial rites and to ensure that all the required rites are observed. During burial, a number of carefully selected people enter the grave first to receive the body when it is lowered in. They then carefully place the body in a specially hallowed out niche in the grave. The rest of the grave is filled up.
Burying one in a sitting position requires that a small extension be dug into the grave’s longitudinal side to accommodate the deceased. Respected elders from the community chant incantations as they place the deceased in a sitting position in preparation for burial. Peter Makokha, a respected clan elder, says such incantations are only said for members of the Balunda clan.
“There are specialists in the community who know how to prepare the graves and their services are always always sought. Some traditional rites are observed prior to the digging,” says Makokha. The custom, Makokha says, does not discriminate against gender or age and the rite is performed for every clan member. Makokha explains that the only difference occurs when elderly men with grown up grandchildren die. They are wrapped in a cow’s hide before they are interred in a sitting position.
“When an elder who has grandchildren who have undergone the second rite of passage (circumcision) dies, it calls for more elaborate rites like wrapping him in a skin before burial,” says Makokha. This is to signify that the person being buried commands a lot of respect in the community and has left a rich legacy for the younger generation to emulate.
“The skin wrapped around the deceased is a sign of authority and also serves to give him a dignified resting place,” says Makokha. “Even women from other communities or Bukusu clans who get married here go through the same system during their burial.” This, however, does not apply to women who get married outside the clan for they are handled according to the customs of the communities they marry into. “We bury our dead in a sitting position because we believe sitting is a sign of life,” Makokha says.
The community has been practising this custom for more than a century, anchored in the belief that it reduces the number of deaths in their community. Elders say that before that, the clan used to bury their dead like other people but the death rate was so high they were forced them to seek guidance from the spirits of their departed forefathers. “Our forefathers offered sacrifices to the spirits of the departed and were advised on how to inter the departed,” says an elder, William Wanyama.
Another elder, Moses Wakoli, says the Vamusomi, Valugulu, Varutu and Vawambwa clans place their dead the right hand side when burying them. Wakoli says the people of these clans place their dead this way to enable them to continue monitoring the activities of the living. They are buried without metallic objects such as rings, watches or belts as these might put them in bondage and make it impossible for them to oversee their communities’ day-to-day activities.
“Being buried with some objects can also lead to bad luck and result in the death of members of the community,” said Wakoli. Due to the large number of such burials, Makokha says coffin makers in Bungoma have modified them to suit the clan’s needs. He says the coffins are built to resemble a cupboard. The prices, however, remain the same as for conventional coffins. Source: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.ourstrangeworld.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/0129011.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.ourstrangeworld.net/%3Fp%3D7029&h=99&w=145&sz=4&hl=en&start=5&sig2=aDjBcIwu17lEmIU6zyhohw&um=1&tbnid=JNKwcZNZC-QNHM:&tbnh=65&tbnw=95&eid=&eid=WHVZR8DeFZqUwQHq29T5CA&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dbukusu%2Bburial%26ndsp%3D18%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26rls%3Dcom.microsoft:en-US%26sa%3DN
'Rewired brain' revives patient after 19 years
By Helen Phillips, New Scientist, Sunday 3 June 2007
A study of the "miraculous" recovery of a man who spent 19 years in a minimally conscious state has revealed the likely cause of his regained consciousness.
The findings suggest the human brain shows far greater potential for recovery and regeneration then ever suspected. It may also help doctors predict their patients’ chances of improvement. But the studies also highlight gross inadequacies in the system for diagnosing and caring for patients in vegetative or minimally conscious states.
In 1984, 19-year-old Terry Wallis was thrown from his pick-up truck during an accident near his home in Massachusetts, US. He was found 24 hours later in a coma with massive brain injuries.
Within a few weeks he had stabilised in a minimally conscious state, which his doctors thought would last indefinitely. It did indeed persist for 19 years. Then, in 2003, he started to speak.
Over a three day period, Wallis regained the ability to move and communicate, and started getting to know his now 20 year old daughter – a difficult process considering he believed himself to be 19, and that Ronald Reagan was still president.
Brain rewiring
To try and find out what was going on inside Wallis's brain, Nicholas Schiff and colleagues from the Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York City, used a new brain imaging technique called diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). The system tracks water molecules and so reveals the brain’s white matter tracts – akin to a wiring diagram. They combined this with more traditional PET scanning, to show which brain areas were active.
The team's findings suggest that Wallis’s brain had, very gradually, developed new pathways and completely novel anatomical structures to re-establish functional connections, compensating for the brain pathways lost in the accident.
They found that new axons – the branches that connect neurons together – seemed to have grown, establishing novel working brain circuits.
Surprisingly, the circuits look nothing like normal brain anatomy. A lot of the damage had been to axons that passed from one side of the brain to the other, torn by the force of the accident. But Schiff says that new connections seem to have grown across around the back of the brain, forming structures that do not exist in normal brains.
Neural plasticity
There were also significant changes between scans taken just two months after the recovery, and the most recent, at 18 months. Some of the new pathways had receded again, while others seem to have strengthened and taken over as Wallis continued to improve.
Krish Sathian, a neurologist and specialist in brain rehabilitation at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, US, describes it as an amazing finding. “The bounds on the possible extent of neural plasticity just keep on shifting,” he says. “Classical teaching would not have predicted any of these changes.”
Knowing the mechanism will be important for identifying whether a particular unconscious patient could improve, says Schiff, potentially allowing doctors to target their rehabilitation efforts.
Family appeals
But improvements in the care of patients could be made without putting every patient into a brain scanner, says Schiff. There is currently no system for even a bedside re-examination from 8 weeks after an initial diagnosis, despite the fact that “their whole prognosis might change”, he says.
Wallis was frequently classified as being in a permanent vegetative state. Though his family fought for a re-evaluation after seeing many promising signs that he was trying to communicate, their requests were turned down.
“A careful bedside examination at 6 months [after the accident] would have unequivocally said he was not in a vegetative state,” says Schiff. There is a much greater chance of a late recovery from a minimally conscious state, he adds, although such recoveries are still rare. “The Wallis case will force the issue,” he believes.
Source: New Scientist.com