Scores faint at burial of Arusha flood victim

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  • The villagers were visibly shaken as they interned the remains of the 29-year old lady who met her death in Arusha only hours after purchasing a two acre land there.

Katesh. Scores of mourners at Gehandu village in Hanang district, Manyara region fainted on Thursday during the burial of an Arusha flood victim Ms Neema Bajuta.

The villagers were visibly shaken as they interned the remains of the 29-year old lady who met her death in Arusha only hours after purchasing a two acre land there.

Ms Bajuta, who was employed as a cashier by an Arusha-based Bajuta International (T) Limited, met her death on arrival back to the city only to be swept by the raging water following heavy rains.

"This is a tragedy we cannot even comprehend. We leave everything to God", the company official Elifadhili Daudi told the emotionally charged of mourners.

According to the villagers, the late Bajuta arrived at her Gehandu home village on Saturday to conclude a land purchase deal on where she planned to construct a house.

Family members confided to The Citizen that the deal was concluded in late afternoon on Sunday after which she left for Arusha -some 300 kilometres away.

 

She alighted from the bus at Mbauda area at around 1 am, moments after the city was subjected to prolonged heavy rains which flooded the streets.

Accounts by residents of the high-density suburb along the Dodoma road said she was swept by the raging waters as she attempted to cross one of the flooded canals.

Her body was found trapped near one of the culverts on Monday morning, not very far from his Arusha residence.

To honour her, the family decided to bury, the mother of two young twin boys on the very plot she had purchased hours before the tragedy, off the Katesh-Singida road.

Ms Bajuta is one of scores of victims of the heavy rains which pounded Arusha in the last two weeks.

Two others  reported to have succumbed to the deadly floods this week were Hadija Hans and Christina Kivuyo. Both of them were primary school pupils and met their death at Okeryan area.

Residents believe the death toll could be higher because several bodies have been retrieved from flooded gorges withim the city suburbs and on the slopes of Mt. Meru in recent days.

Besides drowning people and flooding homes and destroying food and household items, the rains are reported to have swept away bridges and culverts on the feeder roads.