An entire village washed away by the fury of muddy waters, huts and rudimentary little houses overwhelmed by the landslide of entire portions of land, open roads and bridges torn apart, trees uprooted and above all, tragically, the deaths are at least 37.
All this is the scenario of the aftermath of the flood in West Pokot, the north-western region of the country, in the middle of the Rift Valley, in the late evening of last Friday.
What cannot now be called small rains have fallen on soils that have been tried by a very long drought and have caused chain landslides. A soccer field practically moved over a village community, while mud torrents swept over acres and acres of land.
Raphael Pkolowo, a survivor of the area, told The Standard newspaper that a landslide of such magnitude had never been seen in the entire region. His family was buried alive as he tried to save its members under the cover of darkness after the disaster that struck the village of Nyarkulian.
Pkolowo said it had been raining heavily for hours in Nyarkulian and that when he was outside the house, he received a phone call at 11 p.m. warning him that the landslide was threatening his village. But when he arrived, it was too late.
"Everything was buried under the ground and when I checked the neighborhood, the houses were buried too. It was shocking. I didn't know where to start - he told local reporters - I saw four people buried alive. We were powerless as the mud flow buried my father, my mother and my two brothers. We managed to save one of my children. It was a chilling experience.
The darkness, the roads interrupted by large fallen trees and the destroyed bridges delayed the rescue and only in the late morning did the authorities and the Red Cross arrive on the spot. We continue to dig, hoping to save other people trapped in the sea of mud, among pieces of masonry and metal sheets that belonged to the roofs of houses. A tragedy of rural poverty, where everything for four months a year is mud, and for other months is arid land.