MWAWANA & NDWIGA: Consider mass burial, memorial monument at flight ET302 crash site

On Sunday, March 10, Kenya woke up to the sad news of the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines flight to Nairobi just six minutes after it took off from Addis Ababa.

All 149 passengers and eight crew members aboard Flight ET302 — from over 30 nationalities, 32 of them Kenyans — perished in the crash.

Investigators immediately launched body recovery and identification with the bereaved families demanding the remains of their loved ones so as to give them a decent burial. But with the bodies burnt beyond recognition, DNA testing and body recognition is said to take as long as six months.

However, this does not mean that families should bury soil, as has been suggested in some quarters. Burying of soil is inhumane and some religions do not allow such a mock burial.

A mass burial should be done at the scene of the accident with the Ethiopian government building a monument to pay tribute to the victims. This will enable family members to visit the site regularly for memorials.

The bereaved families should, however, give ample time for the investigations and retrieval of bodies to be completed to give any remains a befitting send-off.

For the remains of those who died on the Ethiopian airlines plane crash, symbolic burying of soil might be the only way out.

This incident might, however, trigger the conversation of our view of the dead and the extent we go to to give departed loved ones a “decent” send-off.