Lost everyone in the family, sank into depression, attempted suicide four times, but now living his dream

It took Brian Nicanor Oruko 15 years to discover that he was battling depression.

And just when he thought he had squandered his life opportunities, lady luck visited, and today, the 31-year-old father of two is aiming at the sky with his logistics business.

In 2001 when he was just 11-year-old innocent Standard Four pupil at M.M. Shah Primary School, Brian lost his mum.

Barely a month after his mum’s burial, his father followed, disrupting his life.

Brian and his only sibling, a younger brother, had to be adopted by their uncle.

And two years later, when he was barely healing from the grief of losing both parents within that short period, Brian lost his only brother, sinking him further.

“My life changed. I began to withdraw, but I never understood the feeling,” said Brian.

One day, as he was having his afternoon rest, Brian accessed some poisonous substances, and went to the house.

As he prepared to swallow the substance, his uncle walked in, and his guilt made the uncle suspect that there was something wrong.

The uncle discovered his mission, and took away the substance, and decided to have a talk with him.

Few weeks later, when Brian thought he was now well prepared to execute the suicide mission, it got aborted once again.

“No one actually talked to me about what the death of members of my family meant. The little information I had was that they had gone to some new world and that one day we would rejoin together. I thought through taking away my life, I would rejoin them faster, as I was missing them so much,” said Brian.

Third suicide attempt

One day in 2006, while he was a Form Three student at Nyabondo Boys’ High School in Nyakach, Brian tricked his teachers that he was sick and was advised to seek medication from the school nurse.

“I managed to pick a number of drugs, and took all of them at the same time,” he said.

He was overwhelmed, and had to be rushed to Nyabondo hospital when it was discovered that he was attempting suicide.

The doctors saved his life. This was his third attempt to take away his life.

A year later, Brian lost his grandfather, Nicanor, to whom he was named after. He was approaching Kenya National Secondary Education (KCSE) examination.

He tricked school prefects that he was sick and could not go for morning preps.

And just after the other students had left the dormitory, Brian took a rope he had hid in his box, and tied it on the roof purlin.

Before action, the dormitory cleaner walked in, and found him trying to tighten the rope. Again, he was saved.

Dropped out of law school

After Form Four, in pursuit of his father’s wish of him becoming a lawyer, he enrolled for a Diploma in Law at Embu College, but he didn’t feel his life was better.

“I felt the suicide was not being successful, and I began to live a reckless life,” he said.

In 2009, he was expelled from the institution after he was implicated in a students’ strike.

He moved back to Kisumu, to live with another uncle at Makasembo Estate. The house had been acquired by his dad when he worked at Kisumu County Council before his death.

He began to do menial jobs, such as working at a carwash in order to earn some little coins for his basic needs.

It was while living here that he got interest to reconstruct his life, that he joined Amani Institute for counseling sessions, ending up taking a Diploma Course in Counseling Psychology, graduating in 2014.

Due to his determination, the institution absorbed him to do part time counseling sessions to his peers seeking such services from there, even as he continued to supplement with the carwash job.

Despite not being stable financially, he decided to get a wife, which he thought would help him fasten reconstruction of his life, in 2018.

When Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020, life became hard, and he had to spend much of his time in the house.

Killah B Dels the errand boy

“One day, as I was relaxing in the house, my son sent me to get him his toy. He was used to doing this, and when I sounded uneasy to do it, my wife made a joke, that ‘I needed to get out to be sent by people and make money if I was tired of being sent for free by my son’. I took it as a challenge,” he said.

The following week, I begun going out to hang around town, and help people with errand jobs.

Luckily, someone sent him to deliver some stuffs, and gave him Sh200. He went back to the house, and reported to the family that the wife’s idea had actually worked.

On the second day, someone sent him to deliver some products, and he earned Sh350 for it.

“I felt I could do this as a business,” he said, noting that after wider consultation with the only brother to his mum he began promoting this in social media.

“I called it Kisumu Fast Errands, and begun to push it in digital marketing. At some point, people advised me to register it as a business so that I do a legit business,” he said.

When he went for the registration, he discovered that the name had already been registered.

He then rebranded and named his entity Direct Errands and Logistics Services.

When Lake Region Bulletin caught up with him after delivering a consignment, Brian looked calm, an opposite picture from his story.

His bushy beards, under his clean shaven head painted a picture of a comfortable man. His deep voice and heavily built body does not paint a picture of his self-description of an errand boy.

Today, Brian, commonly known by his peers as Killah B Dels, has 17 people helping him build this entity which is fast taking over logistics business in the Lake Region.

“I would say I am now living my dream, and I want to make this venture transform my story,” said Brian.

His mission is to localize and customize logistics business in the area.

“We are errand people. We do any errand jobs. We help people move household goods, deliver groceries, and any other thing you want done, any task, just ask” said Brian.

He adds: “Those who live abroad and want their projects back home supervised, we do that to save them from being conned by relatives as has been reported before.”