By Nyang’au Araka
“We promise you that your children will not walk this journey alone.”
That promise by Eric Ong’uti Ayuka’s brothers and sisters at his funeral on Friday in Ekerenyo, Nyamira County, were more than a farewell to a brother who had fought illness for more than two decades.
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They were a promise to three children; Maxwel, Mark and Elsie, who lost the father whose dreams were largely anchored on their future.
Hundreds of mourners from across Nyamira, Narok, Nairobi and Naivasha had all come to bid farewell to a man whose 41-year journey had been marked by humility, resilience and an unrelenting determination to secure a better future for his family.
The sheer size of the gathering and the length of the funeral programme that stretched well past 4pm despite efforts by the organisers to keep it within manageable limits offered perhaps the clearest measure of the mark Eric had left on the people around him.
His elder brother Wilson said Eric’s death on September 21, 2026 followed severe gastrointestinal haemorrhage that caused massive blood loss and critically low haemoglobin levels.
He underwent multiple blood transfusions and dialysis before his condition deteriorated and he required intensive care and life support.
His story had been followed closely by Gusii Press Club, particularly during his long and costly medical journey.
In May 2025, the club reported that his hospital bill had crossed KSh6 million after complications following a kidney transplant in India.
By July that year, the bill had passed KSh10 million, prompting another appeal for help from family, friends and well-wishers.
The transplant had offered Eric and his family hope of a new beginning but the transplanted kidney eventually failed after rejection and other complications, forcing him back onto dialysis.
He subsequently endured repeated hospital admissions, infections, unstable blood sugar and blood pressure, dialysis-access complications and severe anaemia.
According to his family, Eric continued working, pursuing education, raising his children and making plans for the future even as his health deteriorated.
He had trained in building engineering and architectural studies, project management and project planning and management, eventually earning both a bachelor’s and master’s degree from the University of Nairobi.
He served in the Nyamira County Assembly in charge of infrastructure and also practised as a private construction consultant.
Unfinished project
Eric’s greatest unfinished project, however, was not professional but his family; wife Anna Kerubo, sons Maxwel and Mark, and daughter Elsie.
One of his greatest hopes was to complete the family home where they would grow up in security and call their own.
Now Anna has to raise the children without the man who had spent years planning their future, and that reality was poignantly captured in the family’s tributes.
“We promise you that your children will not walk this journey alone. We will stand with Anna. We will stand with Maxwel, Mark and Elsie,” Eric’s brothers and sister said in their tribute.
His mother also promised that the house Eric had been working to complete would not remain unfinished.
“Your house may be unfinished today, but it will not remain unfinished. Your loving brothers will come together to complete the home you started, and your children will have a home,” she said.
His children, in their own tribute, promised to carry forward the dreams their father had for them.
“We promise you, Dad, that we will not give up. We will stay together. We will look after one another. We will work hard in school. We will grow into the people you wanted us to become,” they said.
That promise is now at the heart of the family’s appeal for continued support.
A Children Support Fund has been established to help Maxwel, Mark and Elsie continue with their education and pursue the future their father had envisioned for them.
The funeral programme specifically appealed to relatives, friends and well-wishers to contribute towards the children’s education, saying every contribution would help “keep their dreams alive”.
The poster issued by the family gives the fundraising details as Paybill 542542, Account 551922, under the name Ann/Shem/Wilson.
At the tail end of the eulogy, Eric’s family stated: “You fought a good fight. You finished your race. You kept the faith.”
But speaking to this writer on Sunday, Wilson said that Eric’s death goes beyond the story of a man who fought illness for more than 20 years, finished his race and kept the faith.
“Eric is gone but his death has opened a new chapter, a chapter of ensuring that we give his wife and children the support they need to walk into a better future,” he said, thanking everyone who has stood with them thus far.
