They had gone to western Kenya to bury their pastor. On the road home on Sunday morning, 22 of them died.
The Kenya bus crash happened at Kanga, just past Mtito Andei town in Makueni County, on the Nairobi-Mombasa highway.
Makueni County Commissioner Abdullahi Khalif said a church bus carrying 45 passengers collided with a tipper truck at about 7.45am. He said the bus belonged to Power of the Word Church and that half of its roof was torn away.
According to The Associated Press, the passengers were returning to Mombasa after the funeral of their church pastor.
Harvey Mulei, Makueni’s health chief officer, told the Nation that 18 passengers died at the scene and four more died in hospital. Sixteen survivors of the collision were still being treated at Mtito Andei Sub-County Referral Hospital, he said, and two had been referred to Makindu.
The death toll in the Kenya bus crash has already changed. Early reports put the figure at 20, and Khalif cautioned that it could rise further.
Dr Kevin Wamalwa, the medical superintendent at Mtito Andei Sub-County Hospital, called it “a serious accident” and said his team was working to save patients in critical condition.
Violet Mwandonyi, a mother of two, told AP that the group had eaten breakfast in Mtito Andei and had only just set off again. She could not recall what happened. “I don’t know the fate of my two children who were on the bus,” she said.
What caused the collision is not settled, and the early accounts do not match.
In a statement on Sunday, the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) said preliminary reports pointed to a head-on collision and that improper overtaking “may have contributed to the crash”. Its investigators are working with police.
A passenger, Spenza Mudave, gave AP a different account: a truck struck the bus from behind and the bus rolled over.
Investigators have not yet settled the question.
The Kenya bus crash came three weeks after another mass-casualty collision on the same highway.
On 3 October, 17 people died at Salama, also in Makueni County. Police said a truck driver tried and failed to overtake another truck, and the collision involved several vehicles, including a van of Catholic pilgrims from St Matthias Mulumba Parish in Mikindani, Mombasa. They were heading to a prayer shrine in Subukia, Nakuru County.
One group was travelling to pray. The other was coming home from a burial.
The two crashes occurred at different points along the highway, suggesting that road-safety concerns may extend beyond a single location. In both cases, early official accounts pointed to overtaking as a possible factor, although investigators have yet to establish the full circumstances of Sunday’s collision.
The AP reported that NTSA had identified the stretch where Sunday’s crash occurred as an accident black spot and made recommendations to improve safety. We could not establish from the publicly available information how many of those recommendations had been implemented.
NTSA has identified more than 270 accident black spots nationwide, according to figures cited in reports on road safety. Of these, 199 are on the Mombasa-Malaba Northern Corridor, which includes the Nairobi-Mombasa highway. NTSA figures for 1 January to 4 October put road deaths at 3,995, equivalent to about 14 a day.
Police and NTSA officials say reckless overtaking, speeding and drunk driving remain among the leading causes of crashes. Both agencies are running a public campaign ahead of the December travel season. Sunday’s collision occurred as that campaign was under way.
A funeral took them to western Kenya. Now, families are left mourning 22 people who never made it home.
