The late Kenneth Stanely Njindo Matiba's final service is set to be held on Friday at the Lang'ata crematorium.
According to the politician's kin, the man who was referred to as the father of multi-party democracy categorically stated that he wished to be cremated upon his death.
The service will only have family members and close friends who were invited.
The Daily Nation on Friday produced a video that showed renovations taking place at the crematorium in preparation for Matiba's body to be cremated.
Speaking to Citizen Digital, Lang'ata Cemetery Funeral Superintendent Nderitu Maina divulged details of how the whole process takes place.
[caption caption="File image of Nderitu Maina "]
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He stated: "Per month its five to ten, that is around 60 bodies in a year.
"When you want to cremate, first open a file with us at City Mortuary, and then pay a cost of Ksh. 16,800 which is cheaper than burying,” he added.
Mr Maina disclosed that for that process to be done, the crematorium has to be notified at least 24 hours to time, and when the date arrives, the family of the deceased wheels in the casket and conducts the final service before cremation.
"They will push the body up to the doors of the cremation room then the council or county workers will take the body and put it in the furnace. It must be inside the casket, fully prepared the same way people do when they bury,” Maina mentioned.
It is after which that one person picked by the family or was identified by the deceased in his or her will who is then allowed in to light the inferno.
The funeral superintendent further noted that since the incinerator is largely manual, it takes six to eight hours of combustion with county worker maintaining temperatures using 40 litres of diesel fuel, which is required for one body.
"Something to do with 200 to 300 degrees so it will not melt the bone immediately,” he further narrated.
Maina reveals that this is where all organic matter is consumed, leaving only bone fragments and metal implants, if any.
According to Maina, it is until the next morning that one of their employees go to the cremation room and selects the small bones left, which is often be between a quarter and an eighth of a kilogram.
The fragments are then taken to the City Mortuary where a grinder reduces the bones to a consistent texture similar to sand.
The remains, or ashes, as they are mostly referred to, are then transferred to an urn then later handed to the family.
[caption caption="File image of members of Matiba's family"]
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