Couple and their children narrowly escape death

Zulekha Juma, a senior nursing officer at Nakuru County Referral Hospital chats with Caren Chepkemboi one of the victims of the Sachang'wan accident that involved 13 vehicles on Tuesday. [Harun Wathari, Standard]

A couple and their two children were among travellers caught up in the fatal accident that claimed over 15 lives at Sachang'wan on the Eldoret-Nakuru road on Tuesday.

Jackline Chepkurui said she was travelling in a matatu with her family to Bomet from Ngata, Nakuru, for the Christmas holiday when the accident occurred.

The couple sustained serious injuries while the children were slightly injured.

Prior to the accident, Ms Chepkurui revealed they had stopped 100 metres from the scene of the accident as the car tyres were being changed.

“We were heading to Bomet from Nakuru and upon reaching Sachang'wan our matatu developed problems. The tyres had to be changed before we proceeded with our journey,” she said.

Chepkurui said she was holding her two-year-old child as the 15-year-old child sat next to her.

Her husband, she said, sat behind her and offered to hold someone’s child while on the way.

Their journey was, however, cut shot by the accident.

Despite her pain, Chepkurui was happy that her children survived.

She said the 15-year-old jumped out of the matatu window as Chepkurui held the other child tightly against her chest.

“Things turned nasty and I saw my child jump out of the window, I can’t explain how it happened, all that time as the trailer approached,” she said.

Unable to hold onto the child further, Chepkurui threw her through the window.

The other child, which her husband had offered to hold, breathed her last in front of them.

Caren Chepkemoi, who was also involved in the accident, said her two children survived but they were yet to know the whereabouts of a four-year-old girl she was holding for her sister-in-law.

She said she was informed that the minor was in the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit.

George Gathuru, the facility deputy nursing officer, said out of the 39 victims brought to the hospital, only nine were admitted.

Among the nine were five males, two females and two children - eight had their condition stabilised and one had been transferred to the ICU.

Meanwhile, the driver of the matatu that killed 11 members of the same clan in a freak accident at the Kamukywa bridge in Webuye, was not conversant with the road.

Surviving members of the family that lost nine kin said the driver who also died on the spot after crashing into a cane-ferrying truck, had not driven on that route before.

The driver had driven the van that plies the Luanda-Kakamega route after the family hired him to ferry them to a family reunion in Matunda, Kitale in Trans-Nzoia County where their sister is married.

Five other people from the same village who had accompanied the family on the trip also died in the crash.

The matatu had 17 occupants. Only two survived and are recuperating at the Bungoma County hospital.

Among those whose lives were cut short by the accident was a 21-year-old Caroline Kegode, who was waiting to graduate as a nurse at Nakuru-based Kenya Medical Training College.

Her 17-year-old brother, Joseph Ingati Kegode, who was waiting for his Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) exam results, also died on impact.

Their mother, Abigail Kegode, who was with them in the matatu, also died alongside their uncle, and an aunt with her two children.

Wycliffe Kegode, their father, who was in a separate car with his brother Godfrey Oguso, whose two sons escaped with minor injuries, said he desperately tried to warn the driver of the death trap that was lying in a blind corner moments before it dawned on him that the warning may have come a little too late.

Small groups

When The Standard visited Mahanga village from where the family hailed, we found small groups of grief-stricken villagers speaking in hushed tones, perhaps struggling to come to terms with the fact that 17 people they had known and interacted with were no more.

Mr Kegode, a security manager in Mombasa, sat on a white plastic chair gazing at the distant Nandi Hills, his face expressionless.