Viola Aluoch Onyango, Cathy Akinyi Okach, Mathlida Aoko Awuor, Millicent Akinyi and Caroline Atieno died in a gold mine collapse in Siaya County on March 4, 2025.
On Monday, at around 5 pm, a group of five women embarked on a money-chasing venture that had become a routine— digging for gold at the Lumba gold mining site in Rarieda, Siaya County.
Unknown to them, what was supposed to be another day of toiling and hustling would turn into tragedy and a harrowing nightmare for their families.
Millicent Akinyi, 40, Mathlida Aoko, 42, Viola Aluoch, 27, Caroline Atieno, 36, and 42-year-old Catherine Akinyi were buried alive.
The women, who had defied the odds to venture into a field dominated by men and dogged by death, perished as they fended for their families.
They are the latest victims of government failure to regulate the artisanal mining sector which is increasingly claiming lives amid laxity in enforcement of existing regulations.
When the Nation.Africa visited the mining site on Tuesday, efforts were underway to retrieve the miners’ bodies as residents and local leaders blamed the government for failing artisanal miners.
By evening, police and locals had retrieved the bodies and taken them to Bondo Sub-County Hospital mortuary for preservation as their respective families made burial plans.
The Nation.Africa’s interviews with families and friends of the deceased revealed that each one of them has a story of resilience, perseverance and struggle attached to their life histories.
A photo of the late Viola Aluoch Onyango, 27, who was among the victims. They were lured by the promise of gold, but the mines showed no mercy.
Viola Aluoch, the youngest of them, recently graduated from college with big dreams but she was yet to fulfil them, thanks to Kenya’s runaway unemployment crisis.
“She wanted to become a surgeon,” said Dorine Akoth, her aunt.
Aluoch, who has left behind a two-year-old baby, is said to have turned to the mines after failing to secure a job.
“She saw it wise to engage in some income generating activity instead of sitting at home doing nothing,” said Akoth.
A photo of the late Catherine Akinyi Okach. She was merely there to meet her friends when the tragedy struck.
Then there is Catherine Akinyi, whose husband John Okatch from Konge village said had stopped by at the mine for a brief banter with her friends when she met her death.
“A huge stone hit the left side of her head. I think she must have suffered internal bleeding as a result. By the time I got to the scene, her body was still warm and I could feel her heart beating faintly. She passed away moments later,” recounted Okatch.
Just 20 minutes before the tragedy, Akinyi had called her husband to remind him to return home early.
“I have been away on a foreign trip to Ethiopia but got back home on Monday morning. So I left the house later in the afternoon to run a few errands when she phoned me at around 4.30 pm. But 20 minutes later after the call, she was no more,” said Okatch.
Edwin Okanja Ochwa during an interview with Nation.Africa in Ramba, Siaya County on March 4, 2025. Having lost his beloved daughter, Millicent Akinyi, a mother struggling to raise her young child alone, had turned to the mines for survival.
Also grieving was Edwin Okanja whose third-born daughter, Millicent Akinyi, breathed her last under the suffocating mound.
Akinyi, a mother struggling to single-handedly raise a six-month-old baby, had turned to the back-breaking gold mines to make ends meet.
A photo of the late Millicent Akinyi, a mother struggling to raise her young child alone, had turned to the mines for survival.
“She was staying with me after separating from her husband and the only job she could find immediately to support her child was gold mining,” he said.
Caroline Atieno, 36, died in the Lumba gold mine tragedy in Siaya County.
Another affected family is that of Caroline Atieno, whose 20-year-old son Rollins Odiwuor, 23-year-old daughter Molen Achieng and Fozia Ruth, 15, have been rendered total orphans following her demise.
Ronnie Odiwuor during an interview with the Nation in Ramba, Siaya County on March 4, 2025. He clung to the cruel reality that his mother, Caroline Atieno Omira, had died in the mine.
Odiwuor said he had returned home on Monday evening from a two-week visit at his maternal home, unaware of the calamity which had struck the family matriarch.
“Our father died in 2010 leaving us under the care of our mother who is now gone too. This is quite devastating,” he said.
Ronnie Odiwuor's sister, Mollen Achieng' during an interview with Nation.Africa in Ramba, Siaya County on March 4, 2025. She is coming to terms with the cruel reality that her mother, Caroline Atieno Omira, died in the mine.
His sister Achieng, who completed high school in 2022 but has never joined a tertiary institution to further her studies due to lack of fees, said that the death of her mother had dealt her a big blow.
“I don’t even know where to start from. Mum was everything to us,” she said amid
sobs.
For Peter Awango, who hails from Central Asembo, losing his wife, Mathlida Aoko, was
more than a personal tragedy. It was a collapse of a life built together from scratch.
A photo of the late Mathlida Aoko Awuor, a mother who had turned to the mines for survival.
For four years, his wife worked tirelessly in the mines, supplementing his meagre income, generated from small-scale farming, to raise their five children.
“She was the family’s breadwinner. I am just a peasant farmer who depends on proceeds from farming. I don’t know how I am going to take care of the children alone without her support,” Mr Awango lamented.
Peter Awango Bure of Central Asembo during an interview with Nation.Africa in Ramba, Siaya County on March 4, 2025. The loss of his wife, Mathlida Aoko Awuor, is more than a personal tragedy. It is the collapse of the life they had built together.
The gold mines of Lumba had for a long time been a source of both hope and despair, but now they have become a graveyard, a place where women seeking survival found death instead.
Siaya County Governor James Orengo and Rarieda Constituency MP Otiende Amolo, who visited the scene, called on the national government to move in with speed and effect safety regulations in mining sites across the country, noting that it is the responsibility of the government to ensure that her citizens operate in safe environments.
The incident comes barely a week after three artisanal miners died in Rera village in South Gem location after they were trapped inside a gold mine.
The Lumba gold mine that collapsed on March 4, 2025 in Ramba, Siaya County, killing five women.
Stephen Odhiambo 24, Musa Owino, 30, and Moses Onyango, 33, were excavating at around 4 am when a shaft collapsed and buried them alive.
On February 3, two miners lost their lives in Museno Village in Kakamega County after the walls of a shaft caved in on them. Eighteen people survived the mishap.
Six days later, four artisanal miners died in an abandoned gold mine in Rachuonyo South in Homa Bay County after they ran out of oxygen during a mining expedition.
The four men were said to have suffocated inside a shaft in Ruga Village on the outskirts of Oyugis Town.
The miners are reported to have sneaked into the killer mine without the knowledge and consent of the owner. The mine was abandoned three years ago due to depleted gold deposits.
