Children playing outdoors.
On March 23, three boys suddenly caught fire as they played in Nairobi’s Embakasi area.
In a tragedy that illustrates the danger posed by the lack of playing grounds in the city, what would have otherwise passed as a normal Saturday afternoon of play turned tragically wrong.
In one moment, they were playing under a high-voltage line that was right behind the 11-storey apartment they called home. As they played, they had a metallic object with them. In the next moment, they were screaming their lungs out while engulfed in flames.
Two of them are being treated for burns. One is dead.
Raymond Chacha, aged nine, died a day after that tragic incident.
His friends, Brandon Otieno, 9, and Jeremiah Musyoki, 8, suffered burns and have spent the better part of the last month in hospital.
A photo of Jeremiah Musyoki who was electrocuted at their apartment in Pipeline Estate, Nairobi in this photo taken on April 28, 2024.
Brandon, who suffered 28 per cent burns, has been admitted to the Kenyatta National Hospital since that incident. He stayed in the intensive care unit for four days and then was transferred to the burns unit where he spent 11 days before he was transferred to the general ward.
The Grade Four pupil sustained burns to his face, hands, and abdomen, among other areas. His hands are limp and immovable and there are fears they may never regain full functionality.
Jeremiah, on the other hand, left the Jamii Medical Centre on April 22 as his parents feared the hospital bill, which was rising by Sh1,550 a day, could get too high for them to pay. He is being treated at home, with his burn wounds on the legs, hands and abdomen being cleaned and dressed every day by his parents. He had suffered 30 per cent burns.
The parents of the deceased child were not available for an interview as they were still shocked by the turn of events.
On the other hand, the parents of the two injured children aren’t sure exactly what happened.
The parents’ assumption is that one of the children raised a metallic object, believed to be a wire used to fit mosquito nets in place, high enough to either touch one of the cables or to reach close enough to cause a reaction.
“A sudden lightning-like explosion was heard, and there was a power outage (in the entire building) for some seconds then the power came back,” says Mr Killion Okandi, Brandon’s father.
“It is worth noting that those power lines are very low,” says Mr Paul Musau, Jeremiah’s father.
From what Mr Musau was told by a neighbour, the metal didn’t reach the power line; it only got close and somehow that sent down a furious flame.
In its advisory on how to avoid electricity-related accidents, Kenya Power tells parents: “Watch out for children playing with electrical appliances or playing near transformers, including flying kites near power supplies.”
Kenya Power did not immediately respond to our request for a comment on the matter.
The parents, besides being troubled by the mounting bills (Mr Okandi’s father had a Sh179,333 bill by April 22 while Mr Musau paid only part of the Sh73,821 bill he faced), wish they knew what exactly happened that day. Both were away when the incident happened.
“I was away from home (when I got a call). On reaching here, I found that the boys had been taken to Mukuru Health Centre. Medics at the centre said they couldn’t handle the injuries. We got a Good Samaritan who carried us in a private car and we went all the way to St Mary’s Lang’ata. Upon reaching there, they just opened the car door and saw the extent of the burns and said it was beyond them; that Kenyatta National Hospital was the only stop,’” says Mr Okandi.
mencken ragged indent: In Mr Musau’s case, his wife called him that afternoon. The incident happened between 3pm and 4pm. Their son, Jeremiah, had run into their house with his clothes on fire.
A photo of Brandon Otieno who was electrocuted at their apartment in Pipeline Estate, Nairobi in this photo taken on April 28, 2024.
“As soon as I was informed, I sent money to my wife and told her to rush him to the nearest hospital,” he says.
The house is located about 130 metres from the Catherine Ndereba Road in Embakasi South. It is in the larger Pipeline area where landowners are competing on who can cram the most units in one apartment.
“The problem is that everyone is greedy in Nairobi. They want to utilise every little space available to earn something out of it. Much as I may speak, at the end of the day no landlord will want to leave space for children to play,” says Mr Okandi.
Unlike few other residences in Nairobi where constructors leave a floor or two to be playing areas, playing spaces in the Pipeline locality are scarce.
Playing on rooftops
Children have to make do with the rooftop – which has its risks and which also serves as the place for airing clothes – or the corridors and sometimes the road.
However, because this is a place where every inch of the road is this or that trader’s territory, and because motorcycles and vehicles are ubiquitous, roads are a no-go zone for children.
And so it happened that on the eventful day, a gate to the back of the building, where a small garden exists, was open. The garden, about three metres wide, is located between the building’s wall and the compound’s wall.
The parents don’t know who opened the gate. The known contact of the caretaker was switched off by the time of filing this report, so we couldn’t tell the property owners’ story.
Seeing a rare chance to play in a green space, and unaware of the danger posed by the cables above the garden that appeared docile, the children went on with their games.
Says Mr Musau: “That gate (to the garden) should only be opened during emergencies. It shouldn’t be opened at other times. Children don’t know the hazards of where they are playing. Even those who touched that didn’t know what they were doing. They do not know about electricity.”
Paul Musau (left) and Killion Okandi whose children Jeremiah and Brandon were electrocuted at their apartment in Pipeline Estate, Nairobi during the interview on April 28, 2024.
“Here, the playing space is the rooftop and along the corridors,” says Mr Okandi. “There is no playing space. But you can’t leave here and go to an expensive estate (with playing space). You have to be where you can afford rent.”
Kenya Power advises the public not to build houses too close to power lines, but given that the owner was permitted to construct a house there, and because there are many other houses close to the line, one gets a feeling that this won’t be the last tragedy involving the high-voltage line.
“Ensure that your buildings, structures or operations are not under or very near power lines,” says Kenya Power in its guidelines.
Parenting spoke with Mr Henry Ochieng’, the CEO of the Kenya Alliance of Resident Associations (Kara), on the matter of playing spaces for children.
His opinion is that had everyone been playing by the rules, there would be plenty of playing spaces for children.
“The ideal situation is that every neighbourhood and every development in an estate must have provision for social amenities, and that will include playing fields for children. This is something that is common sense, because you can’t put up development where you’re going to have people living and then you don’t make provision for children to play. So, the truth of the matter is that the estates that are coming up in the recent past don’t have provisions for playing fields. Or rather, the provision is there, but because of what I would call the greed of the developers, they turned those playing fields into spaces for construction,” says Mr Ochieng’.
“So, you find that we have estates where children are forced to play on the estate roads, that poses danger,” he adds.
A September 2020 report by the UN-Habitat Kenya – titled the Nairobi City County Public Space Inventory and Assessment Report – indicated that the capital city has more than 826 public spaces, among them 99 playgrounds, 51 sports fields, 15 parks and 19 gardens, among others.
However, most of these public spaces are under immense pressure from grabbers and are diminishing by the day.
It gets worse when you consider the Kara CEO’s observation that there doesn’t exist a legally binding Nairobi masterplan.
“We don’t have a current master plan as we speak. The one that we had expired. We had one that was put in place in 2013 but the process has not been completed in terms of making it a legal document,” he says.
Regardless, says Mr Ochieng’, there are laws governing construction that are being defied.
“We have the Physical Land Use Planning Act that covers development planning. It provides clearly what can be done where and what cannot be done where. Even that is not being adhered to,” he notes.
One solution to the safeguarding of public spaces, Mr Ochieng’ advises, is to ring-fence them.
“In estates where we have playing fields, we want county governments to work with residents’ associations so that the ownership of the field is vested on the community. That means the county government can hold the land in trust but in terms of ownership, the ownership is vested to the community so that they can protect it,” the Kara boss says.
As he adjusts to the interruption the accident the March incident has caused (Brandon at KNH has an identical twin who is at home with the father he is nursed in hospital in the constant company of his mother), Mr Okandi has a profound observation.
“If a child is not playing, it is not right for their health. If those who build plots had such a plan (for playgrounds), it would be good. But some plot owners just consider vehicle parking. They don’t mind so much the playing space for children,” he said.
