Accident:22 killed and 47 injured as 2 buses collide

By Standard Team

Some died swiftly, others slowly and agonizingly. There were those who lost the battle to live, young and upbeat about what the future held for them.

But still there were those who died too young to comprehend what life and death were-all they knew were their parents’ names-Daddy and ‘Mummy’. For them life was like being on a rollercoaster, it could take your breathe away, but when it stops, you clap, laugh and cry in joy.

Others were at the point of life they had children and they were the sole breadwinners.

But now along with the bread for their families, they are gone, killed brutally and senselessly by our roads. Beside the rivers of tears, they have hapless and defenceless children, our roads’ latest contribution to our vicious circle of poverty and high-dependency levels.

Smiling and bidding their loved ones bye, they climbed the steps leading into the bus, one team in Kisii, another in Nairobi. Later, as the nation mourned and the bereaved wept, it turned out they strode into the belly of the beast — the killer contraption we call coaches, which have left a grave and broken limb in almost all Kenyan homes.

They all were full of life, the zest of it written on their faces. But in a flash they were gone, including the driver with foot pressing the gas pedal in all probably to the metallic floorboard.

The journey home from the city ended in death, but for the survivors, it would be either life on a wheelchair or that of an invalid — strapped to the bed. The tragedy for the injured and the bereaved is that they will pick up the medical and burial bills — on top of the bare-knuckle struggle to lead a decent life in these hard times.

Naftali Omwansa cries his heart out after viewing his wife’s body on Wednesday. Inset: Bewildered relatives console each other at Narok District Hospital. Photos: Moses Omusula/Standard

Urgent Questions

But with their exit, along with others who have been claimed by the road, over which we seemed to have lost control and in fatalistic manner surrendered to fate, are hard and urgent questions. They were not the first and won’t be the last.At year’s end the count will be around 4,000 dead and many others maimed and clawed by the road.

• On Wednesday another 22 died in Narok, how many more will have gone before we restore sanity on our roads?

• What does it cost or are we incapable of getting buses and trucks off the roads at night?

• If Transport Minister Chirau Ali Mwakwere has failed, where is Mr John Michuki who succeeded?

• Is it rocket science or a blast to the moon to enforce speed limits, clean up our corrupt traffic police force, and draw up timetables for our buses?

• What does it take to set up a database for our drivers, so that we can keep tabs on the weird and the wayward, and finally blacklist them?

• Should we allow those who drink and drive us to continue so long as they pull out alive from their next road crash?

• Is our collective conscience as a nation dead and we just see statistics, not faces, on the rising death toll on our roads?

• When brakes fail or engine drops, sending our passenger vehicles with shiny in-good-condition stickers careening off the road, do we the citizens go hang the inspection officers?

• Or have we given up and steeled our hearts with the comical but cruel consolation: "Everyone for himself (or herself) and God for us all?"

Bitter Truth

The questions are many, the truth a bitter bill to swallow — not all accidents are unpreventable. Some simply are murders — we turn the vehicles into weapons and use them to kill, break or pierce others. It matters not, it seems, if in the process we die. We would say it is bahati mbaya (bad luck) or ‘Act of God’.

Consider this — their bloodied bodies lay side by side, like fallen soldiers in battlefield turned slaughterhouse. But these were not soldiers, instead of guns and bayonets they baby’s milk bottle, boiled maize, fruits and torn shoes. Speeding, witnesses say, killed them as Wednesday came at midnight.

Of those confirmed dead, only seven had been identified by last evening, as the truth about road smash finally sunk.

Of the dead, 21 were on the bus christened Philemona, from Kisii town. It crashed onto a bus heading to Kisii and christened Nyamira Express at a steep hill near Saipei trading centre, about 17km from Narok town. Survivors said the driver of the Philomena bus lost control as he negotiated the corner and hit Nyamira Express. The driver died on the spot.