
Salema Masha narrated softly, but she is animated by the inner strength that saved the lives of her five children.
one day in March she walked them from a remote desert where the followers of a television evangelist from the country were starving themselves to death believing that they could meet Jesus.
Among the terrible stories that emerge in the last day of Christian worship in that East African country, Salema also shared her encounter.
More than 200 bodies have been exhumed so far from mass graves in the vast Shakahola forest on Kenya’s southern coast, and more are being dug up every day.
Survivors are still found hiding under trees and bushes in the 800-acre area.
Self-proclaimed pastor Paul Mackenzie opened the Good News International Church in 2003.
He was frequently followed by the police for his claims that children should not go to school, and that medical treatment should be denied.
In 2019 he closed the church and invited his followers to move with him to Shakahola, a place he referred to “Holy Land”.
Salema’s husband was among those who obeyed the call.
As she tells her story, she is breastfeeding one-year-old Esther, who was born in the forest.
Her eldest, a boy named Amani, is eight years old.
Mass suicides began in January. Salema says she followed the instructions to start fasting to “enter heaven”.
Mackenzie had been telling his followers for a while that the world was coming to an end.
He previously considered the forest as a sanctuary from this impending disaster.
But with great turmoil it became the last stand to reach heaven before the “End of Days”.
After seven days of fasting, Salema says she heard a voice from God telling her that this was not her will and that she still has work to do on earth, so she stopped.
People around her were dying though – she once attended the funeral of eight children. It was named “sleep”.
But they said: “If my children are not going to die, I should stop attending other people’s funerals,” .
Survivors say the children should have been the first to go, according to a controversial order drawn up by Mackenzie.
Then the unmarried, women, men, and last of all, church leaders.
“When a child cried or asked for food or water, we were told to take a stick and hit them so that they could eat in heaven,” Salema explains.
“So I thought and said I can’t continue this situation, I can’t eat while my child is hungry. I said to myself, if I feel bad like this when I fast, what about my child?”
Self-proclaimed pastor Paul Mackenzie said children should not go to school and medical treatment should be denied.
An analysis of Mackenzie’s sermon on video does not show him directly telling people to stop eating.
However, according to Salema, she was open to weekly gatherings on Saturdays.
“At first, the church leaders dug … wells of water [in the forest] and told us to wait for Jesus and we waited. But suddenly, he told us we should fast and go to heaven,” she said.
When they questioned the order, as Salema did, they were told that if they delayed their deaths, heaven would be filled: “The gate will be closed.”
Much of Mackenzie’s sermon focused on Kenya’s new national identity card that will include encrypted personal data.
On an electronic chip – a “sign of the devil” he said, to be avoided at all costs.
The cost was enormous, and Salema discovered that her husband, one of Mackenzie’s assistants, was involved in managing it.
Her friend told her that when he was going to work, he was going to bury the dead.
One day in March she decided to go along with her position, forcing the family to close.
Four days later he left for work and Salema saw that she had found an opportunity. She took the children and left.
“My children fasted for four days without food and water, and they were crying,” she recounted.
“So, when I saw that they were very weak, I gave them water and I said to myself that I cannot let my children die.”
The children were guided by their mother’s love and protected by her status as Mackenzie’s assistant wife.
Salema stated she was opposed by other worshipers but was not stopped, and when she reached the highway after walking for several kilometers, she got a lift from a “good samaritan” to a safe place.
But others who were escaping were stopped. a group of male managers with swords chased them, beat them, and dragged them to the forest, this is narrated by survivors and former members of the cult.
Mackenzie surrendered to the authorities on 15 April.
He denied ordering his followers to die and fast completely. But a search and rescue operation found many dead children buried in his compound.
The police told local journalists that they found out from the assistants.