“I have just seen my brother’s face. Our faces are alike, even the mouth. I have also seen the legs, those are my brother’s. I have no doubt it’s him.”
A distressed Irene Waheto has just stepped out of the hospital mortuary in Yala, western Kenya.
At least 19 unclaimed bodies have been waiting for identification. They were retrieved over the past two years from the nearby River Yala in different stages of decomposition.
Ms Waheto is making frantic calls to her family in Nyeri, a town nearly 300km (185 miles) to the east.
“It is Ndirangu, I am sure it is him,” she cries down the phone.
But how his body ended up in a river so far from home is not clear.
The BBC’s @FerdyOmondi reports from Yala in western where over a dozen bodies have been retrieved from a river. Their deaths so far unexplained. Security forces deny they are behind the deaths. https://t.co/Lzui9vdnuZ
— Catherine Byaruhanga (@cathkemi) January 22, 2022