Relatives of Naivasha accident to wait longer for body identification

While clad in her red full dress and sandals, with a lesso wrapped around her waist, Mercy Adhiambo contains her tears while sitting at a shade at Chiromo mortuary narrating her rough experience in the past days.

Adhiambo lost her 10-year-old son and a 28-year-old brother in the recent Naivasha accident, where Kisumu-bound bus got an accident along Naivasha-Nakuru road killing over 20 people. It is an incident that caught her with shock and she is trying to come to terms with.

As Adhiambo narrated, her brother Michael Otieno who recently graduated from the National Youth Service and her son Calvins Otieno, a primary school pupil left for Ahero on Friday evening, May 12, but their journey lasted for long hence evoking her suspicion.

"They left for Ahero but they took longer on the road. I became suspicious and unsettled when I heard about an accident next to Naivasha and alerted my husband. He traveled to Gilgil on Saturday morning only to confirm that they had died in the accident," Adhiambo explained.

She narrated that when her husband arrived at the scene, he identified their son Calvin with the clothes he wore but his head was missing. Her brother Michael was also missing a hand and this led to the twist that has contributed to their camping at Chiromo mortuary, waiting for the bodies to be identified.

 Adhiambo and her husband Godfred Asia explained that the duo were booked for by Kawere bus service but were transferred to 'Flashlink', a bus belonging to Super Highway Sacco believed to be a town service bus along Githurai 45 route, unauthorised to serve long distance passengers.

At the same grief-stricken compound is another sad woman, Peninah Achieng', who lost three people on that fateful night in the accident. Like the other mourners, Peninah was yet to come to normalcy of reality of the death that has snatched her long term friend Hellen Akinyi and other two relatives she did not identify.

" I have lost a close friend who was more than a relative to me. Akinyi has left behind four children who are going to school and right now and we do not know how they will continue. We are requesting the government to help us with this problem. Right now even funeral arrangements will be difficult because we do not have the money to take the body home after the test,” lamented Achieng.

Alongside other mourning families, Achieng' has been camping at Chiromo mortuary for days now to help the children of the late Akinyi to identify their mother, who is among the bodies yet to undergo the test.

"We have identified 13 body parts and it is quite difficult to match them. The injuries were severe and it may take longer to analyse them. Though in some cases we may use the fingerprints which may hasten the process," said Dr. Johansen Oduor, who is the Government Pathologist.

According to a statement from the Director of National Disaster Operations Centre, Dr. Charles Owino, the DNA analysis for the deceased will take two to four weeks for the results to be presented. It is after this process that the families will be allowed to view the bodies of the dead relatives. This, however, presents a quite negative news to the affected families, whose numbers have not been confirmed.

Peninah Achieng' is one of such mourners who has been frustrated by the longer duration the DNA test is going to take. This concern is aggravated by the fact that they have to deepen their hands in their pockets to foot transport bills to the mortuary, as well as taking care of the visitors coming to mourn with them. But as per explanation was given by Dr. Charles Owino, the government is set to bankroll the bills for the DNA test and this may extend to giving some funds for the coffins to the affected families.

However, Mr. Pius Maasai who is the Head of National Disaster Management Unit could not give the progress of the DNA analyses to this writer, as he only promised to talk after the results will be released.