The late Mercy Nyasaka whose body was recovered from River Yala days after she wrote a suicide note.
In a text message to her sister a few days after March 5, Mercy Nyasaka, who sounded troubled, allegedly disclosed the chilling plans she had made to end her own life.
“This is the best way I have seen to end my endless pain and judgments,” Nyasaka allegedly wrote in the message.
Less than a week after the message, on March 12, Nyasaka reportedly disappeared from home in Mbita, Homa Bay County, at around 10am — a move that prompted her relatives to file a missing-person report at Kondele Police Station in Kisumu.
In the WhatsApp message to her sister, Nyasaka detailed her struggles with finances and marital issues, concluding the message with her decision to end it all.
“I am sorry to disappoint you in this way but by the time you will find these messages I will be long gone. Let my body be looked for from the Sinaga Bridge at River Yala,” she said in part.
Nyasaka called on her sister to tell her husband to clear an outstanding car loan of Sh55,000 to avoid repossession.
She also gave out the contact of another woman whom she only identified as Beryl, saying she owed her Sh300,000 and that the woman is holding her (Nyasaka's) title deed as collateral.
“I was to meet her today, but I didn’t have the money… If my body is found, please let it be buried at my mother’s home or, if not, at the cemetery. I will watch you and the kids. Cherish them and take them like your own,” Nyasaka wrote in the letter to her sister.
According to her numerous Facebook posts, her world fell apart on March 1, 2023, when she lost her 11-year-old daughter.
In a detailed narration of the events prior to the young girl's death, Nyasaka wrote that the girl developed fever around midnight and she gave her some painkillers to mitigate it as she waited for daybreak to take the child to the hospital.
“I woke up at 5am and texted your school driver that you couldn't make it to school as such he should not pick you,” she writes in one of the posts.
“By 6am I left you in bed to go prepare for you bathing water and breakfast so that we could go to hospital. When I came back to wake you from the bed, my little angel was cold, she had slept and slept forever,” she said in her Facebook post dated February 28 ahead of her second anniversary this month.
The incident changed Nyasaka's life forever as she became trapped in an endless cycle of grief, mourning her daughter's death and even blaming God for letting her down.
From a strained marriage to the unbearable loss of her daughter and insurmountable financial challenges, Nyasaka felt she had endured enough pain.
In a final act of despair, Nyasaka made the shocking decision to end her life and travelled hundreds of kilometres from Rusinga in Homa Bay County to River Yala in Siaya County, a waterway that has become notorious with tragic deaths.
Nyasaka's social media posts spoke of a woman struggling to make sense of a life that had lost meaning as she went through the journey of pain, isolation and despair.
Gem Sub County Police Commander Charles Wafula, while confirming the incident, said Nyasaka's body was retrieved and identified by her uncle John Odongo.
“It was reported by the assistant chief of Gongo Sub Location Frank Owino after members of the public spotted her floating within the Gongo area,” Mr Wafula told Nation.
The police boss further revealed that a postmortem examination had been scheduled for Monday, March 17.
vraballa@ke.nationmedia.com
