When Christmas beckons entire family to death

Kavene and the daughters. The three were killed in an accident in Midoti village, Migori, on Christmas Day. [PHOTO: FAMILY ALBUM/FILE/ STANDARD]

NAIROBI: It’s eerily quiet at the house once filled with children’s laughter, the screaming that often accompanies a toddler’s tantrums, and shrieks of delight upon a mother’s arrival.

The house, in Nairobi’s Imara Daima estate, was until December 25 last year, home to Jane Kavene and her daughters Angela Mkadoe, nine, and Damaris Mwikali, two, who died on Christmas day when their car veered off the road and plunged into a quarry in Migori County.

The entrance to the house is paved with concrete slabs, upon which the doomed Toyota Harrier, bought barely six months ago, once stood. Inside the compound stand several plants, among them a rosemary shrub, whose sweet aroma once filled the kitchen where family meals were prepared.

Inside the house are signs its occupants left in a hurry, with utensils still sitting on the kitchen sink, and children’s clothes strewn around the bedroom. One can imagine the excitement with which the little ones stuffed clothes into their suitcases ready to go on a trip out of town. Sadly, it would be the last of such trips, with none of the vehicle’s occupants left to tell the story of exactly what happened minutes before it sank into the murky waters of the disused quarry.

The year 2015 was going to be a ‘big’ one for the family, as Kavene planned to move to a more spacious house. Angela would have gone to Class 5, an exciting time, for it meant she would only be three classes away from ‘graduating’ from primary school.

Damaris was to start Kindergarten and often took the chance to show off how prepared she was for school by strapping on a tiny rucksack onto her back and strutting around the compound, sometimes in her mother’s heels. Always eager to keep up with her older sister, the toddler was the spunkier of the two, and would often have her way.

When she learnt the phrase ‘No way’, she made sure to speak the words out loud to register her displeasure, pursing her little lips whenever she wasn’t in the mood to follow instructions. Angela, on the other hand, was the more measured and reserved of the two. She loved playing ‘big sister’ and was protective of the toddler whenever they were out to play with other children.

One could tell the bond between the sisters by the manner in which Damaris’ face lit up as she ran into her big sister’s arms and tightly hugged her whenever she came home from school. Angela was a Class 4 pupil at Loreto Msongari Valley Road school in Nairobi.

Little Damaris, looked up to her older sister and insisted on also having her own exercise book, in which was scrawled an array of doodlings, which she proudly showed off to visitors. But there were also times when the siblings fought. Most times the fights ended with the younger one throwing a tantrum and the older sister playing the adult by calling for a ‘ceasefire’.

Ms Kavene, an Immigration officer at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, adored her girls and spent most of her free time with them. It was little wonder then that when death came calling, mother and daughters were together.

Their home in Imara Daima often bustled with activity, with evenings spent with Kavene helping Angela with her homework. There were times, however, when Angela, like most children her age, would rather have watched ‘Sophia the First’, a cartoon, rather than study. But on this, her mother was firm that none of her girls would grow up to be a couch potato.

Although Kavene largely minded her own business, her jovial demeanour and merry laughter were hard to miss, as was her readiness to help anyone in need. A case in point was her setting up of a self help group-Young Women Campaigning Against Aids- to assist women in rural areas living with HIV and Aids access basic needs like food in order to live better quality lives.

Colleagues at the Immigration Department describe her as a ‘hardworking, friendly and helpful’.

Her sister, Stella Mbithe, describes her as always being jolly and caring for other family members and friends alike. “She will be remembered for being social, but aggressive and firm in every task she embarked on,” she says. News that the family was wiped out in just one strike is yet to sink in among many. Neighbours, too stunned to speak, can only shake their heads in disbelief and stare at the gate behind which now stands a house filled with nothing but memories.

“She always said hello when she passed by my shop. I was with her just two days before Christmas. She was with her youngest daughter and they were headed to the salon,” says Getrude, a neighbour. The house help, Nduku, still reeling from the shock, cried out to the heavens asking God why she had been left alone.

The children’s playmates, perhaps too young to understand the enormity of what happened still run around the playground, hoping their friends will turn up so they can swap stories on where they visited or what they ate over Christmas. Sadly, that day will never come.