Secret burial for Mama Rosa as widower insists she ‘resurrected’ – PHOTOS
Despite her much-publicised “resurrection” that captured the attention of many in 2017, her real death and burial on Saturday was low-key, strange and secret.
Mama Rosa, whose real name was Rosa Chepochesau Samson, rose to fame in June 2017 after claiming, backed by family members and her minders, that she had risen from the dead following intervention by the self-proclaimed Prophet David Owuor of the Repentance and Holiness Church.
The story goes that then, Rosa had allegedly died on June 21, 2017 after a battle with an illness. Her husband, Samson Lotirakori, then sent a distress message to the prophet who in turn replied saying “it is well”, and she came back to life.
WITNESS ‘MIRACLE’
Hundreds of people, mostly members of the church, flocked her home in Cheparten village to witness the “miracle” with many expressing their joy with the Prophet’s intervention.
Most of the church members used her to define the powers of their leader.
It was not long, however, before she would disappear from the homestead never to be seen again until last Saturday when she was buried in a nearby village.
No one knew where she had gone apart from claims that she was seriously sick and was putting up at an unknown place in Eldoret town, some hundreds of kilometres away from Kapenguria.
Information about her death started spreading last week but no family member or any of the church’s local leaders could confirm it.
That she had not been buried at her home in Cheparten made matters worse.
However, on Monday, the husband led Nairobi News to her grave in Chepkoti village, some kilometres away from her home, where she was laid to rest on Saturday. She died on January 22 in Eldoret.
The Nairobi News has established that Mama Rosa was buried at the home of her sister-in-law Kostella Lopisto.
CHURCH VANDALIZED
After the alleged resurrection, some villagers in Cheparten were not happy about the news and were said to have forced the members of the church out of the area. Their church was also vandalized at some point.
Her grieving husband on Monday said it was painful to lose her but that she had utilized her time between “resurrection” and death to preach the Gospel.
He insisted that she had died in 2017 and that it was the message from the prophet that resurrected her.
“It took three weeks for her to come back to her senses. She preached and told us to repent our sins,” he said.
Residents were on Monday unhappy with the way her burial had been conducted saying it was done in secret.
“We were expecting Prophet Owuor to attend the burial. Why didn’t he attend?” said Abel Nakapiri, one of the residents from Chepkoti.