Before meeting her death following a stampede at her school on Monday, Antoinette Iramwenya had spent the better of the weekend preparing for the school week ahead.
She was particularly excited about getting to use her new bag, which she had asked her mother to buy just a few days before the accident, which claimed 14 lives occurred.
Describing the days leading up to her daughter’s demise, Antoinette’s mother recounted how her whole household had been taken ill since Wednesday, and it is during this time when they were all stuck at home, that the deceased asked her to buy her a new laptop bag.
”She told me she wanted a laptop bag, I told her I will buy. But I couldn’t buy one, so I sent for three laptop bags…they came on Sunday,” the standard five pupil’s mother, Matilda, reminisced.
”Tulishinda vizuri. They were very happy wakipanga vitu vyao (The day was very good. They were very happy arranging their things),” she added.
The heartbroken parent noted that her daughter was extremely jovial and bright, having never dropped below position five in terms of academic performance.
Matilda added distraughtly that she had seen her daughter minutes to the tragedy, after having attended a parents meeting at Kakamega Primary, where Antoinette was studying.
”At 20 minutes to four, I was still at school…my daughter brought me up to the gate,” she said, adding that shortly after getting home, she received a call informing her of the incident, and when she went to hospital, she could not trace her daughter on any of the ward beds.
”Kuangalia(upon checking) the floor, my daughter was lying lifeless. It was the first body. The girl in a blue short was my daughter,” she painfully recalled.