Slain Damaris Muthee's modest house, a home of trophies

On a cloudy Friday afternoon, tens of visitors bearing condolence messages make a beeline to the home of Damaris Muthee Mutua, the Kenyan-Bahraini athlete who was killed last weekend in Iten in Elgeyo Marakwet County.

But not everyone sees her actual house—made from corrugated iron sheets—as it is tucked behind a tall kei apple hedge around her father-in-law’s modern house in Manza, Machakos County.

“This is where Damaris lived with Felix Mwendwa,” says Damaris’ father-in-law Josephat Ndeti, referring to her husband who works in Qatar.

“The house is humble but full of trophies and medals,” he adds as he leads the Nation into the property that sharply contradicts her accomplishments and stardom.

The couple had planned to build a modern house between the mabati house and the main family house, Ndeti revealed, dismayed that the grand plan may take a little longer to accomplish following the untimely death of the star athlete.

The dozens of medals and trophies on display at the house include the very last acquisition by Damaris; a bronze she bagged at the Luanda Half Marathon in Angola earlier this month.

“When she jetted back from Angola where she staged an impressive performance in the Luanda Half Marathon barely a week to her death, Damaris came straight home and stayed with us for an entire weekend.

She said she had her eyes set on the World Athletics Championships in Oregon in July,” said an inconsolable Rose Ngila, Damaris’ mother-in-law.

“She was in constant communication with her husband throughout the three days she stayed with us. At one point, he discouraged her from travelling to Kapsabet at night, saying, it was risky and she obliged. She bonded with her six-year-old son and was in high spirits by the time she left for Kaspabet where members of a Bahrain athletics team had been training. It did not cross my mind that it would be the last time we would be seeing her alive,” Ngila added.

As glowing tributes flowed, the family is keeping their fingers crossed that the police will arrest Eskinder Hailemaryam Folie, an Ethiopian athlete identified by detectives as the main suspect in her murder, and question him to unearth his motive. Although some of Damaris’ colleagues told the Nation that the Ethiopian was her boyfriend and a constant figure in her life and that they were shocked to learn that he may have committed the heinous act “as he was such a cool man”, her relatives vehemently denied the “boyfriend”narrative.

“Damaris married my son, Felix Mwendwa, in 2016. They have a child. The couple met briefly in Doha as she jetted back from the Luanda Half Marathon in Angola and had since been in constant communication before she left for the Kapsabet training camp,” Ndeti said.

The family strongly believe that Damaris would still be alive had she not fallen into a trap laid by the Ethiopian whom they believe had an ulterior motive. It baffles them that it took neighbours and authorities long to discover that Damaris had been killed.

“We have transferred the body to a Machakos mortuary ahead of the funeral whose planning is underway. We have not yet set the date for the burial,” her father, Sebastian Mutua, said. Aware of the legal hurdles ahead considering that Damaris was both a Kenyan and a Bahraini national, both Mutua and Ndeti said they were not in a hurry to bury the marathoner.

The two bereaved families said they were in constant communication with the police and Bahrain authorities and pray that the police will soon bring Eskinder Hailemaryam Folie to book.

According to witness accounts, Damaris was last seen in the company of the Ethiopian, who is suspected to have fled the country. An autopsy report shared with the family shows that the 28-year-old was strangled to death. Crime busters have placed the Ethiopian at the scene of crime.

Detectives said he fled after snuffing life out of the star that had emerged from a sleepy Machakos village, nurtured by Masinga Central MCA Tariq Mulatya Muema and, later on, by Athletics Kenya vice president Paul Mutwii, before it shone very brightly at the global arena.

“The story is very saddening. Damaris was part of a team of eight sportsmen in Masinga whose talents emerged when they were in primary school. We supported their budding talents and enrolled them in secondary schools which had active athletics programmes. Luckily, all of them have become highly successful in life. Save for Damaris who went to Bahrain, the others are either in National Police Service or the Kenya Defence Forces,” said Mulatya, a prominent businessman who runs a talent scouting programme in the region.

A section of athletes based in Kitui, Machakos and Makueni counties made similar tributes last Thursday when they held a peaceful demonstration in Machakos Town in solidarity with their fallen colleague.

“Damaris was highly disciplined and hard-working. She was extremely talented and had a very promising career. When she started training as an athlete she was in Standard Seven,” said James Mutua, a police officer based in Nairobi and an award winning marathoner. He is also an athletics coach who prides in having trained alongside Damaris at the Machakos Training Camp which is run by Mutwii. Although Damaris ran for Bahrain, her local colleagues looked up to her as a role model.

“We had a lot of hope in her as she was young and would have participated in many races to become a world champion. The government should do all it can to ensure that the main suspect is expatriated from Ethiopia and charged in Kenya. The government should bring an end to gender-based violence,” said Philip Muia, a veteran athlete and athletics coach who claims some credit for Damaris’ success alongside that of a growing community of athletes in Machakos.

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