SULEIMAN MBATIAH | NATION Ms Ann Nderi tends her mother’s grave at Lang’ata Cemetery in Nairobi on January 7, 2001
For Ms Ann Nderi a long term wish became a reality last week. On January 5, she traced her mother’s grave.
The mother-daughter reunion, though posthumous, was significant for Ms Nderi who was only nine years old when death robbed her of a mother and a friend.
“There has always been a void in my heart since she died in 1987,” Ms Nderi told the Nation in an interview, a day after tracing her mothers grave in Lang’ata Cemetery.
The mathematics behind the two-decade hunt is symbolic. Ms Agnes Wanjiku Nderi died at the age of 32 years; her daughter is now 32 years old.
Selfless, loving, intelligent and a strict disciplinarian are attributes she uses to describe her mother.
“She was a maths and physics teacher and she taught us how to read and write at an early age. My brother and I did not attend a nursery school,” Ms Nderi says.
Last Wednesday, Ms Nderi had joined friends and loved ones at the burial of a colleague’s child, but the feeling that her mother was buried nearby in an unmarked grave pulled her to the records office to inquire about the whereabouts of her mother’s resting place.
Armed only with the date of burial and her mother’s name, Ms Nderi requested for a search in the manual records that contain burial details since the cemetery opened in 1958.
An official at the office readily obliged. “As he searched the records, sweat broke out on my palms, childhood memories flooded my mind, I got jittery knowing a find would change my life,” she remembers.
With the plot number in hand, the cemetery official led her to the grave where her mother had been buried and slowly she began to recollect snippets of that day 23 years ago.
“I wore green corduroy dungarees,” Anne recalls.
But the plot number is not the only thing that helped her identify her mother’s grave.
On plot number RC 14 where her mother is buried is the palm tree where she remembers her grandmother sitting on the day of burial, overwhelmed by emotion at the loss of her daughter.
The palm tree’s shade spreads over three graves, shielding them from the scorching January sun.
Minutes later after her find, she updated her Facebook: “After 23 and a half years, today I finally found my mom’s grave. ‘‘What I am feeling right now is what we call mixed emotions. Thank you God.’
Ms Nderi is the eldest in a family of three; her other brother was eight years old then whereas her youngest brother was one-and-a-half years.
He has few memories of his mother but finding the grave symbolises a rebirth for the three siblings.
Not only was her mother’s demise a hushed topic in her family, but a time when each member mourned her privately.
“We never asked questions or commented about her but we each missed her in our own ways,” Ms Nderi says as she stares at the unmarked grave. The wooden cross put up during the burial was destroyed by the elements.
“I am at peace now, knowing where my mother is buried,” Ms Nderi who is a public relations consultant said. She plans to erect a tombstone on the grave during her 24th anniversary in June.
Her paternal uncle and father planned her mother’s funeral on June 27, 1987 and in their custody were the documents they had bought the burial space in Lang’ata. But the two died in the last two years, dwindling her hopes of ever tracing her mother’s grave.
According to an official at the cemetery, at least five people per month request for a search of their loved ones’ buried site to pay their last respects.
With the surname of the dead person and a fee of Sh500, one can trace a loved one’s burial site dating back 40 years.
“I can now focus on writing an epitaph, a tribute to the woman I love,” concludes Ms Nderi.
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