A 46-year-old woman has tragically lost her three children in a devastating fire in Mukuru Kwa Njenga, Nairobi. Everlyn Chibutsa recounted that the children perished in the blaze while she was away working on Monday night.
The deceased children, Mitchell Ikunza (16), Bellamy Chinaida (8), and Delvin Myles (4), were in Form 2, Grade 2, and Playgroup, respectively.
According to Star reports, the fire erupted at approximately 7:30 PM on Monday.
“My Form 2 daughter left home for school at around 6.30pm while I personally took her PP2 and Playgroup siblings to school on Monday morning before I left for my hustle never to see them alive again,” Chibutsa said.
Chibutsa said the children used to return home for lunch in her single roomed mabati house that she pays Sh1,800 house rent monthly.
She said the children’s elder sister, the secondary school one, always picks up her siblings from school on her way home on a daily basis.
The single mother said she hawks second hand clothes commonly known as mitumba to earn a living and raise her children.
“When I was returning home from my daily hustle, I heard a siren emenating from where I live. I became anxious and asked a passerby where the siren was coming from, and she confirmed that some houses were on fire,” Chibutsa said.
Chibutsa said she was shocked to find that a school, church, and the entire plot where they lived had been razed.
“The fire had consumed our residences and spread to the neighbouring plot. I launched a search for my three children in vain. All those I asked said they hadn’t seen them,” she said.
She said, having enquired on her children’s whereabouts in the neighbourhood in vain, she called some of her relatives living in the Pipeline and Tasia estates, but none had seen the children.
“I thought the children had sought refuge in my relatives houses after my house got burned, but it wasn’t so,” she said.
Chibutsa said one of her friends later convinced her to together get to her place for accommodation with hopes that the children would be found.
“A neighbour told me to go sleep at her place. We thought the children had gone to one of my friends’ houses. We went to my friend’s house, but I refused to do it. How could I eat without knowing my children’s whereabouts?”
She said her elder sister called her at around 12.30 am, telling her to get to the scene where her house had been razed alongside many others.
Chibutsa said the friend who had accommodated her offered to escort her to the scene.
“It was at that point that we found out that my eldest daughter had burnt to death. We were able to identify her body at the scene. The bodies of her two siblings were later discovered; they had gotten burnt beyond recognition,” the devastated Chibutsa told the Star at Mukuru Kwa Njenga.
She said police officers removed the three bodies to the City mortuary.
The woman called on the government alongside Kenyans of goodwill to support him in burial arrangements for her children.
“I’m a single mother, jobless and just hustling. I urge the government and Kenyans of goodwill to support me through financial donations to ferry bodies of my three children home for burial rites,” Chibutsa said.
Shibutsa’s rural home where the children will be buried is in Shinyalu, Western Kenya.
