At the age of 11, Okero Okite knew what he wanted to do for a living: retrieve bodies.
He needed no schooling as his father, a venerable body retriever, had taught him the ropes.
Soon after Standard 8, he dropped out of school and joined his father full-time in River Yala where the two would go hunt for bodies in the morning.
Today, the 38-year-old Yala resident understands the terrain, the course of the river, where it's shallow, where there eddies and where a body is likely to get stuck in rocks or branches.
He has had 26 years of experience in a job most people would never consider, like being a morgue attendant.
He told the Star he smokes strong cigarettes while pulling the bodies out, inhaling deeply so he can tolerate the stench.
"My first memorable task was when my father sent me to retrieve a body of a young boy who had drowned. The search took two weeks and when we finally found the body deposited on a stone, it had badly decomposed," he recounted.
In the beginning, Okero said, he had troubled sleep and nightmares, especially as a child, but only for a short while.
But he had a real-life nightmare on Wednesday when police detained him for questioning and made him record a statement about his involvement in finding bodies in the Yala River. They suggested he had been hiding bodies, then finding them.
He said he was intimidated and fears for his life.
But back to his story:
Okero made sure only a few people knew he was helping his father retrieve bodies because it would land them both in trouble since he skipped school to help his father.
"When the other children eventually found out about it, they would laugh at me, asking why I would do that kind of work," he recalled.
"Some were very scared of me and totally shunned me. They thought I probably had a demon," he added.
Okero was determined, however, to carry on his father's legacy. He ignored the disgust of his peers.
"I had three things to master, speed while in water, the traditions regarding the retrieval of bodies and the aquatic life," he explained.
It took him about seven years to master the aquatic life, plants and animals, about three years after he had polished his swimming skills.
In another life, he says he would have been a water animal. He can slash reeds and thickets in the water to clear his way through.
The back of a hippo in the water looks just like the big black stones in River Yala. That day, I swam right across its back thinking it was a stone. The confused hippo jumped out of the water and chased people
He doesn't have a whiff of death about him and he said neither of his two wives has ever complained, hence, the 11 children.
He's a neat dresser, often wearing colourful traditional African clothes or regular suits.
While his first wife, Jackline Atieno was wooed by Okero’s heroics as he retrieved a man who was trapped when his car had plunged into Lake Victoria, his second wife knew nothing about his job.
“News of a young swimmer from Yala who had managed to reach the car and retrieve the man’s body spread so fast,” Atieno said.
Though she would initially worry that since her husband was not scared of bodies, he was also capable of killing. But after many years of living together, she saw his vulnerable side.
Okero’s second wife came to know her husband's job through Atieno.
When he was courting his first wife, she would ask if he was possessed and was often scared he could harm her.
"Having lived with her for close to 18 years, she has never witnessed any erratic behaviour that suggests that I am possessed," he said.
Cynthia Akinyi, his second wife, said Atieno disclosed to her that her husband is a body retriever.
“I swim long distances sometimes. So I tie a machete to my back so when reaching I reach a place where there is no through way, I simply slash the reeds and continue my journey,” he said.
The father of 11 says that he’s a very fast swimmer and understands water so well that he's not afraid of being attacked by denizens of the river, including crocodiles at the bottom.
“A hippopotamus, for instance, can only see you when you are floating in unclear waters. Many people will try to swim towards the shore to get out and run. That’s a fatal mistake since the hippo can see you very clearly as you swim away,” he explained.
Okero once met a hippo while searching for a body in Dhawa area in Yala. In that section, he said, the water flows very slowly as it is so deep.
“The back of a hippo in the water looks just like the big black stones in River Yala. That day, I swam right across its back thinking it was a stone,” he narrated. He was uninjured.
“The confused hippo jumped out of the water, chasing after the group of people who were watching as I searched for their relative's body. They all thought I was dead,” he said.
Okero said though his peers eventually understood it was just a job, many of them didn't think he would ever get a wife.
"I am married to two wives and we have 11 children. My job helped me get my first wife," he said happily.
And to answer the question of intimacy, Okero says after he retrieves a body, he washes himself and his clothes in the river, he goes to a lodging for a shower and doesn't speak a word until his cleansing ritual is over.
My two sons, both younger than 10 years, are quickly learning the tricks and can already retrieve a body
"I was so shocked and scared, so I confronted him to find out if that was indeed his job. He confirmed it but assured me that it was just a means of fending for his family,” she said.
“I had never met a person who retrieves bodies from the water, though I was told that his father had retrieved my grandfather’s body when I was still very young,” she said.
According to Cynthia, her biggest scare was not that he was retrieving bodies but what could happen to him under the dangerous waters.
“He sometimes leaves the house as early as 4am to retrieve a body. I couldn’t help imagining what could go wrong,” she said.
“My two sons, both younger than 10 years, are quickly learning the tricks and can already retrieve a body,” Okero said.
Okero's father, Jonathan Okite, said he started the job in 1968. He said a neighbour known as Mulware taught him how to search and retrieve bodies from the river.
“We were mining gold from the river when we received news that a neighbour’s child had drowned. Since Mulware was a good swimmer, he taught me how to traverse the waters as we searched for the body,” he said.
After retrieving the body, another elder who helped perform the cleansing ceremony, took over in helping him polish the body retrieval skills.
Okite believes that he was ‘called’ spiritually to do the job through a body that was trapped in a spot near Ndanu Falls which residents call mortuary as most bodies get stuck there.
“I had gone to cut branches that we were to use in producing charcoal when I felt a strong urge to go to Ndanu. There, I saw a woman’s body floating facing down. She still had a scarf wrapped around her head, her skin so pale,” he said.
According to Okite, it was this woman’s spirit that called him to start retrieving bodies because even though he simply ignored the body, many people started going to him whenever they wanted a body retrieved.
His family was totally unbothered by the new job, after all, they performed cleansing rituals after retrieving it.
“This job is just like a morgue attendant or pathologist'a work. I don’t understand why one would shun body retrievers,” he said.
Back then, Okite said they would retrieve a body or two in a year when relatives called for help. He said it was very rare to just bump into a body until mid last year.
Okite recalls the toughest retrieval he ever made was of a university student who slipped and fell in Ndanu Falls. He was called immediately and he managed to rescue her alive, though she later died from her injuries.
When the kin request me directly to find a body, then they have to pay me. I usually charge between Sh150,000 and Sh300, 000.
“She managed to hold onto a rock but deep in the middle of extremely fast-flowing water. To get her out, I had to go round about seven kilometers, carrying her.
His relationship with the authorities is so good that when the police see or hear that a body has been found in the river, especially at a risky place, they call him.
He said sometimes, the police give him a token of appreciation but mostly, they just promise to urge relatives of the deceased to pay him, as tradition dictates.
“When the kin request me directly to find a body, then they have to pay me. I usually charge between Sh150,000 and Sh300, 000,” he said.
The greatest challenge nowadays is that there are so many bodies that he can even retrieve five bodies before getting the one he was paid to retrieve.
HOW DOES HE FIND BODIES — WITH MAGIC?
Though he is reluctant to share the details of how he retrieves the body, a local who has witnessed retrieval shared the details with the Star.
Ronson Odenyo was present once when Okero was retrieving a body, a neighbour's child who had drowned in 2012.
"He was playing with his friends when he slipped and fell into the water. Okero was called," he recounted.
"He wore dark blue shorts and carried a reed, about 50cm long, and a wild fruit that floats in water called Otange in Dholuo.
What was surprising he said was that the reed did not fall and remained in a vertical position as it went down the river.
"It was rumoured that some traditional medicine that guided the body retriever to where the dead body was. I saw the retriever follow the reed slowly while swimming," he said.
At a point in Ndanu area, Odenyo said the reed stopped moving with the waves and started moving in circles.
The retriever is not to talk to anyone while he is in the water.
"At the point where the reed was moving in circles, Okero dived and then, he brought out the body," he said.
He tied the body to a rope and slowly swam with it across the river.
If the body was not found on that day, Odenyo said the relatives would be forced to camp along the shores till it was found.
"It is believed that when the relatives camp along the river, they call the spirit of the dead to float. If they don't, the spirit assumes they don't care and the body takes longer to emerge, explained resident Francis Openda.
(Edited by V. Graham)
