The death of Rosemary Chemutai Koech has left behind a painful account of a marriage that had broken down, a difficult separation and a private struggle that her family says she carried for months before her death.
Chemutai, 40, died on August 21 after she was found at the house she shared with her children in Ngong. She had been living separately from her husband, Kevin Migwe Kimwatu, for about four months.
The couple married in 2013 and had four children together. However, their relationship had deteriorated over time, with the two eventually living apart.
After her death, Chemutai’s sister shared parts of a journal she had kept during the difficult period of her life.
The journal was read during her memorial service in Chepseon, Kericho, giving mourners a glimpse into the issues that had troubled her away from the public eye.
In the journal, Chemutai wrote about the pressure surrounding a house she had worked hard to build. She expressed fears that she could lose what she had invested in and that someone else could eventually benefit from the money, time and effort she had put into the property.
She also wrote about feeling betrayed and used by people she believed she had supported and trusted.
Her concerns extended to her children, particularly how they would be raised under a co-parenting arrangement following the breakdown of her marriage.
One of the entries showed that despite the difficulties, she was trying to convince herself to keep going. She wrote that she would not allow a three-year period of problems to determine the rest of her life.
She acknowledged that moving forward would be difficult but said she had to remain strong and find a way to continue.
Her sister told mourners that Chemutai had struggled with depression, which the family linked to the fear of losing her home and failing to recover the money she had invested in it.
There were also allegations concerning her relationship with Kevin and her experiences at work. In writings attributed to Chemutai, she said she had left what she described as an abusive marriage.
She further alleged that Kevin had worked with her boss at KCB, Faith Basiye, in an attempt to have her admitted to a mental health facility.
Those claims have also appeared in social media discussions and accounts attributed to people close to Chemutai. Some alleged that Kevin spoke negatively about her to her employer, making her workplace another source of pressure during an already difficult period.
The allegations have not been independently established, and Kevin’s position has been presented differently in court.
In subsequent court proceedings, he claimed that the separation was coming to an end and that Chemutai had asked to return home.
Following her death, a dispute also emerged over her burial. Kevin went to court seeking to stop the burial, arguing that the family had excluded him and that Chemutai should be buried at his ancestral home in Matasia.
A magistrate issued orders preventing the burial without his involvement. Despite the order, Chemutai’s family proceeded with the burial in Kericho on Friday night.
The family explained that they had acted according to their understanding of Kalenjin customs following a death by suicide and a post-mortem examination.
They also maintained that Kevin remained part of the wider family and that their children had a right to their father’s ancestral land.
At the memorial service the following day, the reading of Chemutai’s journal shifted attention from the public image many people knew to the personal struggles she had been experiencing.
To those who knew her professionally, she was a KCB executive and mother of four. But the words contained in her journal described a woman struggling with family disagreements, financial concerns, workplace tensions and uncertainty about the future.
Her death has since brought renewed attention to the difficulties surrounding her marriage, the competing accounts of their separation and the dispute that followed her death.
Her family continues to mourn a woman they say spent her final months trying to find a way through problems that had increasingly weighed on her.
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