Why did he go out and die like that? That is the thought that crossed my mind as I read two recent suicide cases in the news. The first was a man, identified as an engineer. The report said he drove to a prominent mall in Kisumu in the morning at about 8am and parked his big car, a white Toyota land Cruiser V8 leaving the key with one of the guards, with the instructions that his son would pick up the car. Moments later, he jumped from the second floor of the building, sustained severe injuries and died soon after. 

The news report indicated that he had received a demand letter of Kshs 300 million from Kenya Revenue Authority that is housed in the same building. There was no backstory. His name was Hannington Juma and in my curiosity I came across a social media video of him dancing joyously at a social function. Why did he go out and die like that?

A day later, I ran into a video of a distressed father sharing a testimony. It was the father of former TV journalist Mbugua Kimani, sharing an emotional tribute from a father remembering his son’s last words.

“Dad, I have struggled with this body, you have done all you can but my body and mind are not adding up together, so I am tired and I’ve chosen to rest”.

I noted with regret, that nothing had changed. Cases of suicide were still reported as a spectacle and all the news headlines began with the title, “They died by suicide”. 

Suicide reports have become a regular sensational news staple. The focus is always the single factor that pushes them over the edge. The stories have no context or nuance and the reader is left to pity the devastated family members making sense of tragedy.

In our society suicide is still taboo. We haven’t even invented a new language to address its misfortune besides pity and silent judgement. The focus remains on the trigger. The last moments. The proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. The conclusion is the recycled tale of men who failed to hold on to life despite the pressure, who perhaps lacking strength and fortitude, decided to check out. 

The victim, in an act of self preservation leaves behind a trail of grief and reckoning. Family and close associates are confronted with the unresolved pain. All they hanker for is a kind of closure but instead the suicide note innocently assigns the blame of negligence. In every case, a part of us also dies with the victim and it happens traumatically like a severed limb, leaving one numb. That missing part becomes a phantom limb, for the body remembers what it lost.

In coming to terms with this end of life decision, I find truth in the words of soul maestro Curtis Mayfield, who wrote the haunting ballad, Here but I am Gone. The walk of brokenness is unseen and it only comes to light when it is beyond repair and death becomes a very logical relief from torment. We are not cultured to read the signs and we leave everything to the experts, the counselors and therapists. Instead of empathy and compassion, we are trained to fix people and become impatient when the results are not immediate. 

In cases of suicides, what is required is deeper communal healing work that goes beyond messaging of solidarity, hope and calling on experts. Most are really gone by then, already checked out of a miserable life, simply waiting for a final trigger that will hand them the permission to check out. If there was ever a metaphor for a death wish, then suicide is its manifestation.

I suppose the reason it is so difficult for others to empathise is because the disconnection, like disease causing germs, are invisible. We simply cannot see what makes us sick even though it is right in front of our eyes. You could be surrounded by people but your suffering remains unseen and uncommunicated. It has nothing to do with lack of effort or the typical stereotype of the unvoiced male pain. What in my view is at play, is a profound disconnection from everything around you, including family. 

For this reason, the immediate family invariably suffers the shock of the sudden loss and the coping response becomes a conspiracy of silence. They simply do not talk about how the loved one died because it assigns the blame and shame to them.

As I grappled with the topic of suicide in my book Strength and Sorrow, I came to the conclusion it needed a reframing, to be viewed as something of a signal of our brokenness as families and communities. I began to think of suicide as an opportunistic social parasite, always looking for a host. One that preys on existing cracks in the communal armor, sniffing out isolation, disconnection, emotional and economic stress. The kind of parasite that lurks in the shadows of silence and stigma.

The majority of the suicide stories I encounter focus on the trigger rather than the underlying vulnerability, the source of contamination, that crucial backstory that leads to loss of dignity and belonging.

Just as a viral outbreak indicates a failure in sanitation, a suicide indicates a short circuit in the larger family community grid. The victim is merely the most exposed host. 

What then becomes our version of communal hygiene? What is our simple routine of washing hands? Let me explain.

The story’s lead character is Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis and it is set in Vienna, in the 1840s. In the great maternity wards, an unseen enemy known as Puerperal Fever ( Childbed Fever) is wreaking havoc, claiming the lives of new mothers. At the hospital where Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis worked, the death rate is tragically high in a division run by doctors and medical students. In a separate division run by midwives, the deaths are significantly lower. 

The cause of death is attributed to uncontrollable forces and fate. Dr. Ignaz discovers the fatal difference. The doctors routinely moved directly from the autopsy room, where they handled corpses of women who died of the fever, to the labor ward to examine living mothers, without washing their hands. The midwives did not participate in autopsies. The disease was being transferred by the doctor’s unwashed hands, making the professional caregivers the unwitting vectors of death. 

Then in 1847, Semmelweis mandates a simple behavioural change for the entire medical staff. All must wash their hands with a solution of chlorinated lime before entering the ward. The result is dramatic and the mortality rate in the doctors’ division plunges to that of the midwives division. The simple act of communal hygiene breaks the cycle of infection. 

You would imagine a happy ending but Semmelweis breakthrough solution is resisted because it is too simple and it implicates the educated elite who had been inadvertently killing their patients. 

Today, we risk doing the same: rejecting simple relational solutions because they demand a shift in responsibility from the expert to the neighbor. I am persuaded to think about suicide prevention through the lens of public health and communal behaviour change, our version of washing hands. I imagine an utu principle that reinforces connectivity through small simple daily acts and dramatically reduces the potential for checking out. 

One that moves us away from the language of crisis centers to the commitment of rebuilding villages of local trusted networks. We already have an existing village model where every one is valued and has function. A place where even the village drunk has his place, often as the entertainer, public gossiper and news reporter. This existing structure shows that belonging is tied to utility, not perfect health. The parasite is this modern dislocated way of life that is killing us silently. 

The village has the antidote that teaches us how to cultivate our spiritual antibodies communally. The sad truth about suicide is that it deeply affects the loved ones left behind who wrestle with unresolved answers and the silent weight of the guilt of neglect. But instead of fixating on solitary pain, suicide could be viewed as a circuit breaker, a symptom of communal brokenness. It is a warning, that flashing red light that beeps danger! It reminds the living of the clear choice, to address the crisis of being, allowing families to move away from a culture of shame and guilt to one of shared vigilance.

All that energy tied up in self flagellation must be channeled to understanding the system of interconnectedness that makes it difficult for the parasite of isolation to find a stable host.

These recurring stories of deaths by suicide show us our brokenness and we have to return to the basics, that simple life philosophy that we recite without commitment, 

I am because we are.

Grab a copy of STRENGTH AND SORROW at any major bookshop in Kenya. Or just get one HERE