Kisumu, Kenya – In the twisted wreckage of what was supposed to be a journey home from grief, 32 people clung to life after a devastating bus crash that claimed 25 members of the Sigoti Clan on the notorious Kisumu-Kakamega Highway.
Among the survivors fighting for their lives at Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Teaching and Referral Hospital is an eight-month-old baby – a fragile symbol of hope in a tragedy that has left an entire community reeling from double loss.
When Grief Met Disaster
The Sigoti Clan from Nyakach – they’re a tight-knit group, the kind where everyone knows everyone and funerals bring out half the village. Thursday they’d gathered in Nyahera, Kisumu West to say goodbye to one of their own. You know how these things go in rural Kenya – long ceremonies, lots of speeches, people traveling from all over to pay respects.
By evening they were wiped out, emotionally and physically. Somebody arranged for that AIC Naki Secondary School bus to ferry them back home, all 61 of them squeezed in. Should’ve been just another hour on the road, maybe grab some tea when they got back, try to process the day’s grief.
But at 5:30 p.m. everything changed, their bus has flipped upside down at the Coptic Roundabout, .
Erick Omondi, who lives nearby, was in his house when he heard the crash. Responding to reporters he said, “all we heard was a loud bang after the bus veered off the road and rolled.” Nearly 24 hours later and the guy still looks shaken. He keeps describing the wreckage – how the metal got bent and folded in impossible ways, like someone had grabbed that bus and just crushed it with their bare hands. Omondi wasn’t the only one – dozens of locals dropped everything to help dig people out, and none of them are sleeping well now.
The thing is, these families were already broken up about losing someone. The funeral had barely ended, they have not even healed from the grief of the loss. Now they’re back at the hospital, but this time it’s their own relatives fighting for life. It’s like grief got doubled overnight.
A Baby’s Fight for Life
Down at JOOTRH’s trauma ward, the doctors haven’t stopped since Thursday evening. There’s this eight-month-old baby that everyone’s talking about – somehow survived when adults didn’t make it. People are sharing prayers for the kid all over social media, especially on X.
Dr. Ouma Oluga visited yesterday and you could see it hit him hard. “The baby is fighting,” he told reporters, and his voice cracked a bit when he said it.
Five people are still touch-and-go. The hospital called in extra medical staff from Nairobi because they needed all hands on deck. What’s impressive is they got all 32 survivors treated within three hours – that’s not easy when you’re dealing with this level of trauma.
A Community United in Sorrow
Walk around the hospital and you’ll see families camping out, some with old photos of their relatives who were on that bus. The hospital put up counselling tents because they know this isn’t just about broken bones – people are emotionally wrecked.
There’s a blood drive happening at Leresian Park. The health ministry is basically begging people to donate because some of these survivors need multiple transfusions. “We are united in this sorrow,” Dr. Oluga emphasised, highlighting how tragedy can bring out the best in communities.
The Deadly Roundabout
This isn’t the first time the Coptic Roundabout has claimed lives. Locals know it as a “blackspot” – a section of road that seems to collect tragedies. The Kisumu-Kakamega Highway has a grim history: a November 2024 crash at Iguhu Bridge killed 10, and just last month, a Uzima University bus crash claimed another life.
The 61 passengers on that August evening were packed into a bus designed for 51. As Nyanza Regional Traffic Commander Peter Maina confirmed the casualties – initially 21 dead, then 25 as four more succumbed to injuries – the familiar questions arose: Could this have been prevented?
Beyond the Statistics
President William Ruto has called for accountability, ordering traffic authorities to crack down on negligence. Right now the Sigoti Clan isn’t thinking much about what President Ruto said. They’ve got 25 funerals to plan and 32 people in hospital beds to worry about.
You walk through those hospital corridors and hear the beeping machines, see families taking turns at bedsides. The 29 adult survivors? They’re dealing with everything from busted ribs to head injuries. Doctors are being honest – some of these folks may never be the same.
That baby everyone’s praying for? Still hanging in there, though it’s day by day. Kenyans are tired of reading about these crashes every few months, and somehow this kid has become the face of all that frustration and hope mixed together.
People check the news obsessively for updates – good news gets shared hundreds of times, bad news hits like a punch to the gut.
The blood drive is still going, investigators are still trying to figure out what went wrong. But for the Sigoti Clan, it comes down to this: 25 of their people are gone, 32 are fighting to stay alive, and nobody really knows why it had to happen at that particular roundabout on that particular evening.
Police are still looking into what caused the crash – could’ve been the brakes, could’ve been driver error, could’ve been the road itself. But while they’re investigating, Kenya keeps asking the same question it’s been asking for years: how many more people have to die before someone actually fixes these death traps they call highways?
