As the clock continues to tick and Mr. Maggero’s body nears cremation, the latest reaching KSB headquarters is that Mr. Maggero left a will that his body be cremated in Sweden. A source close to the Maggero’s family has told KSB that Mr. Maggero’s wife will hand over the will to the Kenyan Embassy on Wednesday 10th January.
“What I am doing now is that I am following Maggero’s will”, the wife is reported to have said. It is still not possible to talk to the wife directly but investigations by KSB has revealed that the will was written by Mr. Maggero and handed over to a lawyer in Kenya who has been keeping it and who released it following Maggero’s death.
According to the same source, Maggero’s wife is in possession of the will whose real content is expected to be known through the Kenyan Embassy.
“She has read Kenya Stockholm Blog and she knows how Kenyans are feeling over the matter. She has said that she will personally hand over the will to the Kenyan Embassy in Stockholm tomorrow (Wednesday)”, the source told KSB.
Maggero’s wife understands the Luo culture “like the back of her hands” and the lightning appearing on her back yard on the funeral arrangements could be hiding evidence that she is well aware about the major downpour that may be on the way. This could explain why she has cut off all communication including contacts with Maggero’s best pals and “confidants” like Dr. Otieno Wariaro whom she has interacted with for decades.
News that Maggero’s body will be cremated has upset many Kenyans who believe that the family might be making a big mistake by cremating the body.
At the time of going to press, KSB was still chasing Maggero’s will “round the clock” to establish its content. The most contentious issue which the will is expected to address is the question of cremation which is not just against Mr. Maggero’s Luo culture but also an aboharable taboo.
Another issue that the will is expected to address is whether the old man had indicated that his death be a confidential matter while the will is also expected to throw some light as to whether it was Maggero’s wish that his relatives in Kenya be kept out of his funeral arrangements. So far, his relatives are playing the role of “keen spectators” as his body awaits to be set on fire on Friday.
On the whole, Maggero’s wife has kept everybody out of the news and the old man’s relatives in Kenya were not even informed when he passed away on 3rd January. They were informed by the wife via an SMS message on Monday after the news was broken by KSB which obtained the information from a link four days after Maggero kicked the bucket at the Intensive Care Unit at Karolinska Hospital.
Maggero’s closest pals like Dr. Otieno Wariaro, Mr. Jack Mulo, Mr. Oyuga Odada, Mr. Joshua Oyugi, Mr. Ochieng Nyambok, Mrs Hellen Opwapo, Mr. Sospeter Opee, Marine Engineer Okulo, Terrorist expert Michael Osumba and Journalist George Ogindo were all caught with their pants down both on the news about Maggero’s death and plans about his cremation. Mr. Jack Mulo did speak to Maggero on his hospital bed on the 24th of December and Maggero proposed that that he come over so that they could celebrate christmas.
Since information was published at KSB that Maggero’s body will be cremated, a cross section of Kenyans have been working overtime to try and see whether anything can be done to stop or delay the cremation until Maggero’s relatives in Kenya can come to Sweden to participate in the arrangements.
Mr. Jared Aroka, an ODM-KS member who has known Mr. Maggero for a long time, told KSB that he managed to get in touch with Maggero’s son in Finland through Mr. Otieno Mbare ( a Kenyan) to evaluate possibilities of the son traveling to Sweden to help address the crisis.
Unfortunately, the son was still in a state of shock about his father’s death and told Mr. Aroka that what he knows is that there is a memorial service for his father which will take place on Friday.
“I don’t know how I will get to that church because I don’t know where it is”, he told Mr. Aroka. Hopes that the son would be of any help evaporated quickly after the son told Mr. Aroka that as far as he knows, he cannot do anything and he cannot be able to travel to Sweden before Friday when his father’s body is set to be cremated.
Another glimmer of hope lay in possibilities of the Kenyan Embassy in Stockholm interveneing. However, expectations from the Embassy were dashed after Mr. Jack Mulo told KSB that Kenya’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has refused to get involved in the matter arguing that it is a “domestic issue”.
According to Mr. Mulo, Mr. Oyuga Odada (who is currently in Kenya) had tracked down Maggero’s brother and that the two had visited the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Nairobi. According to an official at the Ministry, Maggero had lived in Sweden for many decades and established a family in Sweden. The official said that Maggero was legally married in Sweden and had off-springs who are mature. The official said that under the circumstances, the Ministry was treating the issue as a “domestic matter” which had nothing to do with the Kenyan government. “We cannot be able to intervene”, the official is reported to have told Maggero’s brother.
From the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Odada and Maggero’s brother visited the Swedish Embassy in Nairobi to look into possibilities of the brother traveling to Sweden to attend the funeral.
According to Mr. Mulo, the Embassy wanted a copy of Maggero’s death certificate which nobody (apart from a next of kin) could obtain from the Swedish tax office. Plans of Maggero’s brother traveling to Sweden were therefore nipped in the bud.
The late Maggero’s wife had not even informed the Mzee’s family that Maggero had died and she is the last person who can be expected to help obtain the birth certificate for Maggero’s brother to travel to Sweden to begin giving her terrible head ache on the Maggero crisis. The only favor she did was to inform Maggero’s family (through an SMS) that the old man’s body will be cremated on Friday and that was after news about Maggero’s death had been spilled by KSB.
Kenyans are meeting at Continental Hotel on Wednesday January 10th from 18.00 to dissect the issue. However, the meeting was called before information surfaced that Maggero might have left a will. According to sources, the strategy of the meeting was to pressurize the Kenyan government to intervene over the matter so that Maggero’s relatives could be able to attend the funeral.
If the Ministry of Foreign Affairs could direct the Kenyan Embassy to stop the funeral, everything could come to a standstill with a single telephone call. The problem is that the Embassy is very bureaucratic and a top Embassy official has already indicated that there is nothing the Embassy can do without instructions from Nairobi.
Another option that the Continental meeting is expected to discuss is the possibility of hiring a lawyer to materialize an injunction on funeral arrangements until a next of kin can arrive in Sweden. A major obstacle now is that if Maggero wrote a will, then everybody will have to relax on any plans based on going to court.
KSB continues to monitor activities around the Maggero crisis and will update readers as soon as new information emerges. From the point of view of KSB, it looks like the late Maggero atachomwa and the question which Kenyans will have to examine closely is the question of “analysis” about both the historic event and the interesting circumstances surrounding it. Probably, it could be time for Mr. Maggero to make another piece of history post humously.
Okoth Osewe
About the Author
