Both ladies however remember seeing a saloon car on the railway tracks.
“I think the our driver got tired of waiting for it to cross the railway line and decided he could get to the other side faster,” Ada recalls.
“And then there it was. Upon us. I heard the horn at the same time I felt the impact and somehow I got thrown out of the bus and under the train,” Florence who sustained a blow to the head remembers.
Ada who sat opposite the door had an opportunity to catch a glimpse of the train before impact, “I first heard screams, saw people standing and then it was on top of us.”
The next thing Ada remembers is being in a strange car, confused, “I remember asking the lady who drove me to the Mama Lucy Kibaki hospital where my baby was and why there was another woman in the boot.”
And so it was that two women who had previously never met, ended up with one plea in mind, not “serikali tusaidie,” (the government help us) but, “get UmoInner off our roads.”
“Most of the matatu’s have very loud music. When you get inside the matatu and your phone rings and you tell them please reduce the volume no one listens to you in fact they always tell you to get out,” Ada testifies.
But even as 12 persons lie in the morgue and two dozen others nurse scars sustained in Wednesday’s accident, UmoInner Sacco it appears has no apologies to make.
“The matter of fact is that UmoInner bus did not overlap or it was driven carelessly. The bus got stuck on the railway line while trying to cross…police shuld (sic) always stop the vehecles (sic) when the train is coming in advance so the question is did the police too sleept (sic) on the job?,” is what the Sacco had to say for itself on what appears to be its Facebook page.
An answer Ada says is not good enough, “I can’t hold my 11 month old baby because my arm is fractured in two places and they can’t take responsibility for any of it? No. It’s just too much. We want them out of Umoja.”
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