The Horror Of Nairobi City Mortuary Where The Unknown Dead Are Dumped To Rot

May 27, 2025, will forever be etched in our hearts with a bitterness words cannot fully express. On that day, our beloved niece was killed. Just like that. Her life—young, vibrant, full of promise—was violently and cruelly snatched away. But what followed was not just grief. It was a horror. It was an indignity. It was a chilling tour through the underbelly of a system so broken, it now deals in the business of human suffering without a shred of conscience.

After her murder, officers from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) picked up her lifeless body. They did not treat it with the dignity that every human being deserves in death. No. They dumped her body at the Nairobi City Mortuary like refuse. She had no phone. No identification. No name. She was catalogued as “unidentified,” tossed into a cold, rotting sea of the forgotten.

Only one suspect was arrested. And ironically, that suspect is the reason we even discovered what had happened. It is that suspect—the same person now behind bars—who ended up leading the authorities to retrieve her fingerprints. That data would eventually start the painful search for her family. That search took them across the country to Bungoma County—deep in the rural embrace of Tongaren Constituency, in the quiet villages of Soysambu-Mitua Ward. It was not until June 13, 2025, nearly three full weeks later, that her parents were located. Twenty days. Twenty long, haunting days.

I was the one who drove her father and other relatives to Nairobi City Mortuary. What awaited us there was something that will live in my nightmares for the rest of my life. That place… that place is not for the living. That place is not for the faint-hearted. That place is where dignity goes to die.

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The moment we approached the gate, the stench hit us like a punch to the chest. The cheap disposable masks we wore were no match for the overpowering smell of decay and despair. It felt like death was reaching into our lungs. We paid the so-called “viewing fee”—a dehumanizing Ksh 500—to gain access to the backroom of pain, the “unidentified” block, where the bodies of those who don’t matter are kept. That’s what they’ve reduced it to: a transactional horror show.

What we saw inside will haunt me forever.

The room was a house of death, chaos, and inhumanity. Bodies were scattered everywhere. Yes—scattered. On the floor. On top of each other. Some had been there too long and had burst open. Others were bloated, grotesquely swollen, hanging on the edge of explosion. The air was thick with the smell of decomposition and despair. It was unbearable. But we couldn’t turn away. We had come to find her.

Then we saw her.

Or rather, we saw what was left of her. Twenty days without preservation had taken their toll. Her skin had peeled off, and her face was distorted beyond recognition. Her father stared at her in silence, his face collapsing in confusion and heartbreak. “Is this my daughter?” he whispered, but no one could answer. Her mother—too shaken to come in—had to be called. Over the phone, she described a birthmark on her daughter’s body. It was the only way to be sure.

And then came the final insult.

Before any “treatment” of the body could be done—before she could be cleaned, moved, or handled with any form of respect—we were told to send Ksh 4,000 to a personal mobile number. A bribe. A fee for dignity. A transaction for humanity. Without that money, we were told, nothing would happen. She would remain there, rotting among the unknown. It was not until the payment was made that her body was finally moved to the section for the “identified.”

And then, only then, did the process of preparation begin.

I haven’t touched Nyama Choma since that day. I cannot. I close my eyes, and I see her. I smell that room. I feel the bile rise in my throat. I remember the pain on her father’s face. I remember the silent scream in his eyes when he realized he couldn’t recognize his child.

This country must do better. No one—no one—deserves to be treated like garbage after death. No family should have to pay bribes just to give their child a dignified send-off. No mortuary should be allowed to operate like a slaughterhouse of the forgotten.

Our niece didn’t deserve to die. But even in death, she deserved more than what she got.

This was not just a loss. It was a national disgrace.

Read Also: Kenyans Given 7 Days to Collect Unclaimed Bodies at City Mortuary