Seventeen Catholic pilgrims are dead. The road that killed them has a body count that keeps growing. And the government has known about it for years.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The stretch of the Nairobi-Mombasa Highway around Mlima Kiu<\/strong>, near a town ironically named Salama<\/strong> \u2014 Kiswahili for “safety” \u2014 has become one of Kenya’s most reliably deadly corridors. Saturday’s crash did not come out of nowhere. It came out of a system that has failed ordinary Kenyans again and again, and continues to do so with stunning indifference.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Here is what you need to understand about why this road keeps killing people.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Residents living in the shadow of this black spot are not asking for the impossible. They want the highway expanded into a dual carriageway. That is it. A straightforward infrastructure fix that traffic engineers, residents and drivers all agree would save lives. The fact that it has not happened \u2014 while the death toll climbs \u2014 is not a logistical failure. It is a political choice.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Seventeen pilgrims set out on a journey of faith and never came home. Kilonzo lost his passenger and his livelihood in one moment. A family buries their patriarch two weeks before another family buries seventeen of their own, on the same stretch of road. Kenya deserves better than this. Demand it.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Seventeen Catholic pilgrims are dead. The road that killed them has a body count that keeps growing. And the government has known about it for years. The stretch of the Nairobi-Mombasa Highway around Mlima Kiu, near a town ironically named Salama \u2014 Kiswahili for “safety” \u2014 has become one of Kenya’s most reliably deadly corridors. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4400,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-kenya","category-trending"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"yoast_head":"\n