Kenya Stockholm Blog

This is to inform the Kenyan and other concerned publics that the fund raising for tickets of children of the late Consolata Ndege (a Kenyan woman who passed away in mid-December) has been cancelled by the “Consolata Funeral Committee in Stockholm”.

Speaking to KSB, Mrs. Teresa Mawa, the Chairlady of the Committee, said that the decision was reached yesterday at a Committee meeting held in Märsta and in which new circumstances that emerged yesterday necessitated the cancellation of the harambee.

According to the Chairlady, the Harambee has been cancelled because Consolata’s Swedish husband has scheduled the burial of her late wife for Thursday, January 9th 2014 and that with such an arrangement, it will be impossible for the Committee to complete the process of finalizing arrangements for the children to travel on time for their mother’s funeral. The Chairlady told KSB that at the time the harambee was cancelled by the Committee, the children had not applied for visas because they were still in the process of acquiring passports at the Department of Immigration, a process which, she said, had been facilitated by the Committee.

Problems with Consolata’s widower
The Chairlady said that the Committee received news about the burial date from Consolata’s husband yesterday and that several attempts to convince him to push the burial date forward collapsed because the hubby was uncooperative. A source told KSB that after Consolata passed away, the hubby apparently refused to avail his house to be used for traditional daily “Open House” activities while KSB has learnt that he also said that he will have nothing to do with the harambee. The hubby is not part of the Consolata Committee while he has never attended a single meeting of the Committee.

According to Teresa, “the purpose of the harambee was to enable the children to attend their mother’s funeral and if the Committee is not certain that travelling arrangements will be complete before the funeral, it is the view of the Committee that the harambee be cancelled”.

In cancelling the Harambee, the unilateral view of the Committee was that the Committee’s sole mandate was to raise funds to enable the children to attend their mother’s funeral and that if they have to travel after the burial, a new Committee needs to be set up to address the issue together with any arising complications.

Because of lack of cooperation from Consolata’s husband, funeral arrangements have been taking place at Teresa’s residence who told KSB that she chipped in as a friend to help with a venue due to lack of alternatives.

Consolata is a Sister in Law to Monica (of Märsta) and although funeral arrangements could have fallen on the hands of Monica, she was herself recuperating in hospital where she had been admitted abruptly a few days earlier after falling sick. Despite her absence, Monica has been helping with ideas and after she was discharged from hospital, she immediately joined the Consolata Committee at Teresa’s house to help with the harambee arrangements.

Teresa told KSB that those who knew Consolata could not fail to meet to try and facilitate the trip of her children to Sweden due to lack of venue after Monica was admitted to hospital, arguing that such a position could have been irresponsible and uncalled for.

Teresa said that some Kenyans who had questioned the absence of Monica in Consolata’s funeral arrangements did not know that she was away in hospital neither did they know that she was a Committee member. She added that those Kenyans did not also know that Monica has been updated at every stage of the process. “As Monica’s friends, we did not have to wait for her to emerge from hospital to take charge”, she said. She told KSB that the Committee had Monica’s blessings and that anybody is free to call Monica to establish the truth.

Classified information
According to investigations by KSB, Consolata’s husband may have become uncooperative with the children’s trip to Sweden because he never knew that they existed. A KISS agent who had classified information about the circumstances said that Consolata may only have declared two of her children who travelled to Sweden after she married her Swedish hubby and that the hubby only came to know about the “missing kids” after their mother passed away. “I don’t know about them”, the hubby is said to have retorted when talk about air-lifting the kids from Kenya began soon after Consolata passed away.

If the Committee went ahead with the harambee, the risk is that the kids may not have been able to travel on time to attend their mother’s funeral while air-lifting them to Sweden at a later date could have become complicated if Consolata’s widower is uncooperative. It is for this reason that the Consolata Committee may have been sticking to its mandate (tickets for the funeral) and calling for the formation of another Committee to address the issue of the children’s trip to Sweden if they have to travel at a later date.

Another big problem which may have prompted the Committee to remain on the “safe side” is that if Kenya-Stockholmers descended at the venue en masse to fund raise and the kids don’t show up at the funeral, the negative and dirty talk that may have been generated by Kenya-Stockholm’s propagandists (aka enemies of development) may be so huge that the Committee may be unable to deal with the aftermath.

Okoth Osewe