A shared origin, a shared fate

Montage of pictures of some of the victims who died in Ethiopian airlines crash. [Photo: Standard]

The thirty-two Kenyans aboard the ET 302 Ethiopian Airlines flight taxiing off the Bole International Airport on Sunday March 10, had more in common than the Kenyan passport in their possession.

They shared a home and probably ambitions too. In two hours, they thought they’d be home. Some walking on Kenyan soil for the first time.

Others, finally seeing faces of those they held dear for the first time in months…others in years, perhaps rehearsing what their first words to their husbands, wives, brothers or sisters would be.

It had been a while since Carolyne Karanja, 34, was home yet her family lived through her. She literally provided a roof over their heads after paying for re-roofing of her father’s house in Nakuru.

As she belted up at the advice of the cabin crew, she looked across her 28J aisle seat towards her mother, Anne Wangui, who sat across her on seat 28C. In a couple of hours, Carolyne would introduce her children, including a nine-month-old son to her father.

Interaction between the younger children and the older Karanja had for years been limited only to phone conversations and shared pictures.

Onboard too were Prof Agnes Gathumbi and her colleague Dr Mwangi Minae, The two sat side by side. The professor booked on the middle seat while Dr Minae was allocated the window seat.

Straight from work

Prof Gathumbi was the Director of Teacher Professional Development and Dr Mwangi was a lecturer at Kenyatta University.

“Our thoughts and prayers go out to their families, friends and entire KU fraternity and all those who have suffered loss at this painful times,” the institution’s Vice Chancellor Prof Paul Wainaina said in a statement.

Six rows from the Kenyatta University academicians was Anthony Ngare, a dyed-to-the-wool journalist and a football fan who defended Arsenal, the English team he supported at any opportunity. Ngare was straight from a work engagement in Paris.

Just days before, he had posted a heartwarming birthday message from his daughter on his Facebook wall.   

“He had a grasp of things and could discuss any topic with humour and confidence. But what I remember most was his style,” a former colleague, Kiundu Waweru said of Ngare.

Right in front of him sat Joseph Waithaka and Isabella Jaboma. Isabella was on her way home from a health conference in Egypt. Her family says she had one of the loveliest smiles and every day she made it her mission to pass it on to the children living with cancer that she worked with. Joseph was on the window seat. Isabella on the middle seat.

Three rows away, also on the left of the aisle were Jared Mwazo Babu and Mercy Ndivo, a young couple on their way back home.

Across the aisle to their right sat Husein Swalleh, a former secretary general of Kenya’s Football Federation (FKF), had been returning to Nairobi after serving as a match commissioner in an African Champions League game between Ismaili and TP Mazembe in Egypt. Directly in front of him was Ibrahim Mohammed Abdulahi.

Completing the trio of Kenyans occupying the middle seats on rows 18, 19 and 20 was Anne Birundu Mogoi.

Anne sat behind the emergency exit, a coveted seat due to the extra few inches of leg room. If, before the flight she stood up, she might have spotted Dr Grace Kariuki on seat 13A and Cedrick Asiavugwa on seat 12L.

“Dr Grace, each time we see a little cloud, or a rainbow soaring high, we will think of you and gently wipe a tear from our eyes,” Dr Kibachio Mwangi, head of the Non-Communicable Diseases Division at the ministry of health says.

Cedrick, a third-year law student at Georgetown University in the United States was on his way to Meru for the funeral of his mother-in-law. Cedrick sat just one row away from Business Class where Lahoti Vaibhav, an alumni of Visa Oshwa High School and a pilot with a Saudi Arabian Airline sat.

In the subtle luxury of business class, the attention to detail and the extra leg room, he might have struck up a conversation with his seat mate, Johnathan Seex, Group CEO of Tamarind Group, a company that operates a chain of high-end hotels in Nairobi and the Kenyan coast.

But just as the passengers were getting familiar with their surroundings, something terrible happened. Their diverse backgrounds rich as they were, their futures, unpredictable as they were, were all to suffer a common fate. A common destiny whose end has left behind an un-fillable void made worse by heartache that only seems to get worse by the day for the bearers of this burden.

As the plane took off, their fates, just like their origins, became intertwined for one last time.

Minutes after pulling away, the Boeing 737 Max 8 plane started oscillating up and down by hundreds of feet — a sign that something was extraordinarily wrong, the New York Times reports.

Back at Bole, the control tower noted the anomaly and started preparing for an emergency. At the time, they knew neither the magnitude nor the finality of the anticipated crisis.

New evidence suggests just how brutal these final moments were.

“It was a loud rattling sound. Like straining and shaking metal,” Turn Buzuna, a 26-year-old housewife and farmer who lives about 300 metres from the crash site told Reuters news agency.

It took just five minutes for all contact with the plane to be lost. It is thought that this is when, according to witnesses, the plane came down.

“It tried to climb but it failed and went down nose first. There was fire and white smoke which then turned black,” another witness, Tamirat Abera also told Reuters.

As this happened, tens of people, thousands of kilometres away were making their way to the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. Some, afraid of the unpredictable traffic on Kenyan roads were already at JKIA, perhaps bidding their time in the nearby cafes or at the parking spots, waiting, eagerly, for the return of their relatives, only to go back home as the bearers of bad news.