“I jumped into the wastewater drainage behind the mall and walked for about 150 metres to escape death,” 51-year-old Richard Maige , a gardener at Westgate Mall where he has worked for 15 years told People Daily yesterday.

Donned in a green overall with a grey illuminating stripe on the arms, waist and shoulders of the outfit, standing on the edge of a bridge for Maige, the events of September 21, 2013 are still fresh in his mind.
He fixed his eyes on the spot where the waste water from the mall drains comes out into the river. “I was at work when the attack happened, but God being God, I saw salvation,” he said, explaining that he came out of the drainage at the point where Peponi Road intersects with Mwanzi Road at the Roundabout next to the mall.

Pandemonium broke

It was around 9.30 am in the morning when the attack happened, Maige, a father of four who was 41 years then recollects. And all of a sudden, pandemonium broke; people wailing amid heavy gunfire.

This is when it dawned on him that all was not well, and having had worked at the mall for almost seven years, he knew every corner of the mall, and it was easy therefore for him to find an escape route.
He had not witnessed such a chaotic situation in his life. Maige hails from Kisii county.

I was shaken to the core, and prayed ceaselessly inside that trench as I tried to find my way out,” he said, counting himself as lucky as most, or all of the mall security personnel who were manning the main entrance perished under the heavy gun attack, and that presented an opportunity to escape.
At the time, he was pruning a flower bed near the entrance to the mall.

However, he counts himself healed from the traumatic pandemonium that saw 67 people innocently going about their Saturday morning engagements at the Mall felled by the terrorists’ fire. “Since I witnessed that sad incident, I have never had any nightmares since I know it was because of God that I am alive today,” he said as clerics who led prayers at the commemoration of the decade after the mayhem condemned criminals hiding in archaic religious beliefs.

Sheikh Muhammad Khan from the Universal Peace Federation, and christened Ambassador for Peace and Environment was categorical that no scale of crime is justified by religion.

Rooftop parking

“I stormed a mosque and asked the faithful what’s this we are doing,” he said when he took to the dais for the first prayer at the mall’s rooftop parking, where the terrorists hit guests who were on a cooking challenge with bullets on the fateful day.

“I believe that those who did the acts were not doing it for the Islam faith, but they were just criminals,” he said, noting that his religious beliefs should not be mixed with acts of crime and should not come in the way of humanity.