Garrisa university attack survivor graduates with top degree

Rachael Muthoni counts herself lucky to have escaped death by a whisker during the terror attack at the Garrisa University back in 2015.

Muthoni, alongside 30 other first-year students, were having morning prayers session in one of the classrooms when armed men stormed in the room and started shooting at them.

She was shot seven times and sustained serious injuries that saw her admitted in a hospital for close to a year. All the seven bullets lodged in her body were removed but the doctors were hesitant to reveal the extent of the damage the injuries had caused.

After a three-month stay at Kenyatta National Hospital, she was transferred to Kijabe hospital and this is where she was told she had a spinal injury and will not be able to walk again for her entire life.

Numerous therapy sessions helped her to sit up and use her hands to do the basics such as feeding herself and writing.

Thoughts of how her life would be, being confined to a wheelchair, flushed through her mind and it was a bitter pill to swallow but after intense counselling, she was able to accept her condition.     

“Initially it was very difficult for me to deal with the sudden change of lifestyle because I was doing everything by myself but now I have to rely on other people to do even some basic things,” she says.

Muthoni was a first-year student and in her second semester pursuing a Bachelors of Education degree when the attack happened.

Overcoming trauma

Despite the ordeal at the university she never gave up on her ambition to pursue higher education. After she fully recovered, she wanted to go back to school and her parents supported the idea.

 “Being confined to a wheelchair did not dampen my spirit and ambition to purse my goal though it takes a lot of determination to get here. So many of my friends died during the attack and their dreams cut short and because I survived, I have to keep fighting,” says Muthoni.

She enrolled for a psychological counselling course at the Kenyatta University and graduated few months ago. Muthoni says taking the psychological counselling course helped her in recovering from the trauma and the memories no longer haunt her.

Now out of school and learning to earn a living, she faces uphill task of facing daily life due to her condition.

“There is that perception that people living with disability do not deliver which is not the case,” she remarks.