Jane Waruguru Ihure Ngunjiri should be with her family in their Nairobi South C home, mothering her three children and being a wife to her husband of 20 years.
As a respected high school teacher, she should be coaching her second-born child who is a KCSE exam candidate.
Except that she is not.
On the night of June 14, Jane had told her husband Samuel Ndegwa she would go to town the following day to guarantee a Sacco loan for a teacher colleague from St Angela’s Girls High School in Kiambu.
That’s where she taught Christian Religious Education and History.
June 15 would be the last time anyone heard from the 51-year-old woman. As evening fell, her phone was not going through.
Exactly two months later on Friday last week, police found her body on the banks of a river in a forest along the Eastern Bypass, North Airport Road in Nairobi.
The badly decomposed and unrecognisable body was taken to City Mortuary. Police called her husband because they had a list of missing persons and family contacts.
Ndegwa recognised her clothes and teeth.
The two months have been harrowing for the family as they searched, called everyone they knew and waited. At first they checked every police station and mortuary on the chance she had been in an accident.
Finding the body is a relief as the family can officially mourn and move closer to moving on.
“We have searched for her every single day since June 15 and it has been an incredibly harrowing ordeal. We are a step to closure,” Ndegwa told the Star.
He said the body was so decomposed that an exhaustive postmortem analysis and DNA matching are required before the body can be released.
On Monday, father and daughter gave DNA samples.
The family said there was no conflict at home, no conflict with anyone they new.
Who could have wanted her dead? Police haven’t said it was murder but that’s suspected.
“I don’t know who could have killed her or how. You don’t want anybody to go through what we are going through,” the widower said.
“She was always a quiet, very hardworking woman. Her class was the best,” he said.
Jane was always at home since schools have been closed due to Covid-19.
She did a lot of physical exercise.
“We identified her by her tooth pattern and the clothes she wore last. However, the police still want us to do a DNA match to confirm our claim to the body,” Ndegwa said.
While the family hopes the police quickly get to the bottom of the suspected murder, the family wants the body released to them for burial as soon as possible so they can begin healing.