Brave boy rescues friend while floating in waters at Solai tragedy

Harrison Kanyeri, a standard six pupil, was watching TV with his parents when tragedy struck on Wednesday night.

At around 8.15pm, Kanyeri heard a loud bang coming from the hills that dot part of Energy village.

“We had just finished dinner when I heard the sound. I thought it was a helicopter making a landing,” recalls Kanyeri.

Unknown to him, it was the sound of tragedy. A tragedy so bad its magnitude is still unknown.

Saturday, 11-year-old Kanyeri narrated to Sunday Standard how his semi-permanent house was submerged in high flowing water within minutes of the loud bang.

Last prayers

He remembers his father Francis Cheruiyot and mother Monica shouting at him to jump outside. But the Endau Primary School pupil was overwhelmed by the raging waters and was swept away. His parents landed on a rock, which they held onto for dear life.

Approximately 10 metres from his house, his guardian angel in the form of his friend, playmate and neighbour was waiting. Eric Kiplang’at had also been swept out of his house by the raging floods and had found a debris to hold onto.

Kiplang’at, though barely safe himself, reached out and pulled his friend out of the moving waters.

“God wanted me to live longer. I saw death coming my way, and as I was saying my last prayers, Kiplang’at pulled me out of the waters. I am grateful to God,” said Kanyeri.

Saturday, the two friends were overwhelmed by grief as the magnitude of the tragedy slowly dawned on the quite villages of Nyakinywa and Energy.

“We cried as we held on. When we were rescued, we both uttered a word of prayer,” Kanyeri says.

But the tragedy left deep wounds in the young boys’ memories. Wounds that only time can heal. While standing on a block waiting for rescue, they saw five bodies, two of them children. Water was flowing over them.

Adjacent to the bodies was a young child struggling for life. The two boys do not know whether the child was rescued.

“It was so traumatising, I still cannot believe that this happened to us,” Kanyeri says.

Kiplang’at’s permanent house was destroyed. He survived by hanging onto a block from where he saw Kanyeri struggling to rescue himself.

“I still do not understand how I saved my friend. I was hanging onto trying to find a way to higher ground when I saw him floating in the water and I reached out my hand to him,” he says.

Kiplang’at’s parents Philip and Esther Koech survived the tragedy.

“I am happy that we all survived although my parents lost all their property. But we thank God for our lives,” he says.

The two boys say it took approximately one and half hours for the water to subside.

“We watched as our houses were washed away by water. We could hear people screaming all around us,” Kiplang’at says.