ISAAC WALE | NATION NTV journalist Doreen Akinyi Magak and husband Edward Juma Okoyo during their wedding at Arya Primary School in Kisumu on December 17 last year. Second Lieutenant Okoyo was killed in battle by Al-Shabaab fighters in Somalia on Sunday.

Less than a month ago, Mrs Doreen Magak took a vow with her newly-wed husband that they would stick together till death did them part. But it came sooner than she thought.

They wedded on December 17 last year but she is now a widow barely a month on, after an Al-Shabaab fighter’s bullet cut short the life of Second Lieutenant Edward Juma Okoyo.

Mrs Okoyo’s husband, who was part of the Kenya Defence Force troops fighting Al-Shabaab militants in Somalia, died on Sunday night, just minutes after talking to her on phone.

“He called me and asked me to call him since he did not have airtime and was in a place where he could not get it. So I loaded my phone and called him 45 minutes later,” says the Kakamega-based NTV reporter.

Mrs Okoyo says they talked for more than an hour before her husband suddenly disconnected the call. “He called me again and when I called him back, he said that he had disconnected because he heard gun shots,” she explains, tears welling up in her eyes.

Her husband had initially told her that they were undertaking a week’s operation.

He later said the operation could last longer, she says.

“When we talked again, he kept on telling me that the situation was not looking good but I asked him to have the courage of the soldier that he was,” Mrs Okoyo says.

She continues: “We talked for a very long time that Sunday and he kept saying ‘remo kaya’ meaning something bad could happen and when we had finished talking, he did not disconnect the call.”

Mrs Okoyo says she was scared and could not keep herself from crying. “I was scared but he sent me a text again.”

‘I love you’ were the last words she heard from him that night and they turned out to be the last words she would ever hear from him.

She explains that she replied to her husband’s message but the delivery report came to her phone one hour later and she got worried.

The next day, she woke up and went about her daily routine.

That day, as she covered the ICC confirmation of charges against the Ocampo Six ruling, the thoughts about the conversation with her husband could not leave her mind, she says.

“On Monday, after completing my day’s work, one of my nieces called me at 8pm and informed me that there were soldiers who had visited my husband’s home in Kasipul Kabondo and that from what she had heard, he could have been been killed,” she says.

Immediately she got the message, Mrs Okoyo says, she knew the worst had happened.

“I recalled a day when he told me that if one day he was away and I see soldiers arriving at home without him, I should just know that he was no more,” she says.

After their wedding at Arya Primary School in Kisumu, she says they went for their honeymoon at Sunset Hotel for three days.

On December 21, three days after their wedding, her husband had to travel to Nairobi at night because he was supposed to be on the frontline the next day.

“We actually lived as husband and wife for three days,” she explains.

She describes her husband as a loving, responsible, caring and religious man.

“I am sad that I’m a widow, a month after my wedding. I can only depend on God now to be my comforter and I’m praying that he rests my husband’s soul in peace. I also hope the peace they are fighting for in Somalia is finally achieved,” she says.

Second Lieutenant Juma died on Sunday alongside one of his colleagues in Somalia.

Source: Daily Nation

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