Man plied route for 40 years before road crash

Relatives at Geoffrey Gachanja’s home at Iruri Village in Mathira, Nyeri County yesterday. It is here that Charles Munyi, who died together with six family members in a road accident at Salgaa in Nakuru, was born. (PHOTO: KIBATA KIHU/ STANDARD)

A man who died with his family in a road accident had plied the route for more than 40 years.

Charles Munyi, 64, often travelled from Kitale to Nyeri and back to attend family events, a brother, Geoffrey Gachanja said.

Mr Munyi and six other members of his family died in a grisly road crash when their vehicle collided with a truck at Salgaa along the Nakuru-Eldoret highway last Friday night.

"My brother Munyi and his wife moved to Kitale in 1976 and for the last 40 years, he would travel here to Nyeri at least twice a year to attend family functions or during the holidays," Geoffrey Gachanja explained.

Mr Gachanja said his deceased brother had travelled from Kitale with his 35-year-old son Gerald Munyi, Gerald's wife Gladys Mukuhi, 27, and their two children Ann Wambui, six, and two-year-old Joel Maina for their cousin's burial at Karundas village in Nyeri.

Also with them were Munyi's daughter Alice Muthoni, 30, and her son Myles Ndung'u,  aged three.

Gachanja said each time the family travelled to Nyeri, they stayed in touch. But on the fateful Friday, Gachanja says he did not call his brother, which was unusual.

After the burial, Munyi and his family spent the afternoon harvesting avocados to take back to their Kitale home.

For Gachanja, that was the last time he would see his brother and family alive.

The bodies of five family members will be buried in Nyeri on Friday, while Wambui and her son Myles will be interred at her matrimonial home in Molo on Thursday.

Mathira MP Peter Weru who visited the family noted it was time for all road transport stakeholders to redesign all the black spots in Kenya.