A legacy of love: Saving her children from an inferno cost her life

Mary Atieno, 32, was washing clothes outside her house in Nairobi's Dandora estate when she heard a commotion inside.

It was followed by a stampede of feet, and shouts from her children who were in the kitchen watching over boiling milk.

"Come and see what is happening," her eldest son, Mark Otieno yelled at her. There was urgency and fear in his voice.

Mary abandoned the clothes and ran inside. She found the kerosene stove covered in billows of black smoke. When she realized that she could not put it out, she grabbed it, intending to take it outside. She only made a few steps from the kitchen before the stove burst into flames.

Quickly dropping it on the floor, she ordered the children to run outside. Jets of flames were already lapping on the carpet beneath her when the stove hit the ground, spilling paraffin all over.

She had to act fast. Her three-month-old baby Kayla Akinyi was sleeping in the bedroom. As she directed her three children Mark (10), Cindy (8) and Kaytlene(3) to leave the burning house, she dashed to the bedroom to save Kyla.

By the time she got to her, the flames were licking on the curtains, walls, and door way with fury. The house was burning up, and she was trapped with her baby.

"She was determined to save the child. She held onto Kyla and fought the smoke and fire to find her way out. Neighbours say they saw her slapping at the flames with her bare hands, while shielding the baby," says her husband Boniface Okendo, photojournalist at The Standard.

He was at work when he got a call from neighbours that their house was burning up.

When Mary had successfully taken Kyla out, she heard her son Mark saying Kaytlene was missing. There were only two possibilities; either she was stuck inside the burning house, or she had left and was playing somewhere in the vast Dandora slum.

Mary did not take chances. She went back into the crumbling building – through the raging flames to find her child. Sure enough, she found Kaytleen hiding behind the sofa.

It is only after she was sure that all her four children were safe that the intensity of the fire dawned on her. After the fire had been put out, and the flames were reduced to burning embers, Mary started feeling pain. Pain that she had previously ignored.

Her maternal instinct had superseded and numbed the pain of burns she had sustained while saving her children.

"When I got home, they had already been taken to hospital, bandaged and discharged. She told me over and over about how happy she is that she saved the children. It is all that mattered to her," says Okendo.

However, things took a different turn barely a week after the incident.

Mary woke up complaining of pain. She was also feverish. With the little baby Kayla, Mary was rushed to Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) where they were admitted for almost five months.

Okendo says it was period defined by worry, sorrow and anxiety.

"I have been a photojournalist for many years, and I have sunk to the underbelly of this country looking for stories. However, nothing prepares you for the challenges of being a caregiver," he says.

When his wife was admitted to hospital, Okendo found himself juggling between work, daily hospital visits, fatherhood, and the uncertainty of having a loved one in hospital.

"Oh, I remember the rain. They were in hospital during the rainy season, and I will never forget the weary trudge, leaving hospital as the rain poured on me. Almost every day. Yet I had to rush home and make sure that the children are fed," says Okendo.

He then pauses, cracks his knuckles, and momentarily gets lost in thought.

When his wife was finally discharged from KNH, Okendo says it was a welcome relief to both him and the children who had missed having a maternal figure in the house.

The relief was however short lived. Barely three weeks after being discharged, Okendo noticed that Mary was tossing a lot in bed. She was restless, and complained of chest pains.

"It feels like something is pressing on my chest. I feel pain when I take a deep breath," Mary told Okendo in the morning as he was preparing to go to work.

What followed, Okendo says, is a confusing blur.

He ran outside to get a taxi to take Mary to hospital. She was rushed to a local dispensary but the doctors advised that she goes to a better equipped hospital because her condition was critical.

"Her breathing was laboured. She was looking at me, trying to breathe, and I could see on her face that she was struggling..." says Okendo.

By the time they got to Kijabe Mission Hospital, Mary had started drifting in and out of consciousness.

Luckily, the doctors were able to stabilise her.

"She was talking. She kept asking where her children were, and who was taking care of them. Our children were always on her mind," says Okendo.

At 1.00 am, August 6, 2015, two days after being admitted at Kijabe hospital, Mary Atieno succumbed to a bacterial infection caused by the burns she got when she went inside the burning house to save her children.

Her last born daughter Kayla, bears scars from the incident. Okendo says that the scars are a celebration. An act of immeasurable love that only a mother could give her children.

"The scars on Kayla, will forever act as an immortalized proof of sacrifices parents make to ensure their children are safe," he says. "Someday, my daughter will ask me how she got those scars. I will tell her a love story. A story of a mother who loved so much that she sacrificed her life. It is not a story of loss. It is a story of love," says Okendo.