How a chama meeting almost claimed my life

Beatrice Omondi before and after the accident that almost claimed her life. PHOTOS| LEOPOLD OBI

What you need to know:

  • “Early in the morning as I was going for a short call, I noticed that I had a missed calls from my wife. It was unusual for her to call me at wee hours of the morning, which astonished me,” Peter recounts.
  • He called back his wife’s phone severally but couldn’t get through.
  • “I also noticed missed calls from a friend with whom his wife were travelling together with my wife to attend their Chama meeting the next day which was Saturday,” adds Peter.

The evening of September 10 was a normal day for Beatrice Omondi and her family. Having sold their apartment in Madaraka Estate where we had lived for 17 years and relocated to a more specious house in Kitengela New Valley Area, all seemed to be well.

Her husband, Mr Peter Omondi, who was working as an advisor at the COMESA secretariat in Zambia had just left the job and was back in the country to be with his family..

DROVE A LONG DISTANCE

As two of their four children still attended the same school in Nairobi West, the parents opted to be driving them to school very early each morning since there was no school transport due to the long distance.

Peter recounts that they would wake up at 4am every morning for breakfast before driving the kids off to Nairobi West to avoid Mombasa Road traffic gridlock.

“We would arrive at school well before 7 am and the children would sleep in the car until around 7.45 am then go for parade before going to class at 8 am,” Peter recounted.

On Friday evening that day, Beatrice was travelling to Kakamega for a chama meeting with a friend who lived in South B.

“My wife washed clothes and cooked enough food to last us during that weekend until she would come back on Monday. I then took her to her friend’s house in South B .We had made arrangements for the children to be dropped the friend’s house in South B after school from where I would pick them after taking my wife to the same friend’s house from where they would take a taxi to Easy Coach stage,” says Peter,72.

Peter and the children returned to their Kitengela home. The two children and their father where for the first time alone in the house.

But misfortune struck the family that night, rendering them to an endless grief years on end.

MISSED CALLS

“Early in the morning as I was going for a short call, I noticed that I had a missed calls from my wife. It was unusual for her to call me at wee hours of the morning, which astonished me,” Peter recounts.

He called back his wife’s phone severally but couldn’t get through.

“I also noticed missed calls from a friend with whom his wife were travelling together with my wife to attend their Chama meeting the next day which was Saturday,” adds Peter.

He then called the friend from whom he learnt with a lot of trepidation that his wife and her friend were involved in a grisly road accident at 2am when the bus they were travelling on lost control and overturned severally.

Beatrice and her friend were among the few who survived the tragedy, but her left thigh bone was so badly fractured that not even seven surgeries have been able correct.

“We met the accident in Nandi -Songoh road after the driver lost control of the bus. Most of us were a sleep only to be woken unusual commotion of the bus. The next thing was that felt numbness as I tried to lift my legs,” says Beatrice, adding that  she passed out some minutes after the incident and regained consciousness at a hospital in Kisumu where they had been rushed by some good Samaritans.

DESERTED ROAD

According to Beatrice, 52, the road is somewhat deserted therefore it took almost an hour for them to get rescuers leading to more causalities.

She was released from the hospital after six months, but she’s been on and off to various hospitals since then in search for an elusive health.

She has visited at least seven hospitals in the last six years, spending millions of shillings without any hopes of getting any better.

“I have had 10 surgeries spending at least Sh7 million but none of them has been successful,” says Beatrice who is currently moving in crutches.

The mother of four says she has been in severe pain ever since she met the accident that she hardly sleeps. She neither do any household chore nor resume to her work station where she worked an office assistant.

Her husband keen to support her back to her previous active life, sold all the investments he had made from his retirement that they are now living a squalid life.

She currently needs Sh1.5 million for hip replacement in India following a recommendation for a surgeon, but the family is now too broke to raise the amount.

“We sold all the lands and the houses that we had bought because to us life is what is important. But now we have reached our end so I decided to relocate the family to our rural home,” says Peter.

Beatrice dreams of walking unaided and living a pain-free life one day.

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