Joyce Ong’ombe, who was injured in a boiler explosion while on holiday in Mombasa in December 2024, attends a special thanksgiving session for her at the Lavington SDA Church on July 12, 2025.
As far as horrible accidents go, the one that befell teacher-turned-businesswoman Joyce Ong’ombe and her Form Three daughter Georgina Ooko ranks among the most heart-rending.
They were in a short-stay apartment in Mombasa last December to usher in 2025 and belatedly celebrate Georgina’s August birthday.
On December 31, 2024, when they were about to prepare breakfast, the kitchen boiler exploded, splashing hot water and steam at mother and daughter.
On January 15, Georgina, who was a student at Alliance Girls, died at the Kenyatta National Hospital.
She was buried in April.
Even as she grieved her daughter, Joyce was fighting for her life.
After seven months in hospital, first at the Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi and then at Fortis Hospital in India, she returned home last Friday.
On Saturday, she made a return to her church, the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) Church in Lavington, where a thankful audience that helped raise millions for her treatment listened to her sad story and thanked God.
“This church is the family that I have,” Joyce said at the end of her teary narration.
The accident was tragic because Georgina was the only child she had been left with after her other two children died with their father when their car was washed away by flash floods in 2010.
Georgina was just seven months old then.
Joyce Ong’ombe attends a special thanksgiving session for her at Lavington SDA Church, Nairobi, on July 12, 2025.
Touched by Joyce’s story, Kenyans led by the Lavington SDA church, where Joyce is a deaconess, raised Sh13.7 million earlier in the year to cater for medical expenses.
In a narration that lasted just under one hour, which was punctuated by sobs at numerous stages, Joyce narrated her story whose excerpts we relay hereunder — in her own words.
What happened in Mombasa
“Georgina was born on August 18. And I’ve tried my best to celebrate every single birthday. In August 2024, I only bought her a cake and I told her, ‘One of these holidays, I will take you to Mombasa to make up.’
“So came the December holiday. Being that I was selling second-hand clothes, December is the time when there are high sales. When people had gone for festivities, I told her, ‘Please, just wait. We will have to go.’ She kept on asking me, ‘Mum, are we still going?’
“I told her, ‘I know we will get time to go.’
“So, when we were going to Mombasa, we were going to celebrate Georgina’s birthday, which I did not do in August.
“The morning before the boiler blasted on us, I woke up as always, I exercised, I went to shower. When I went to shower, the water was hot. It was a little bit hotter compared to the water that can be coming out of the shower, but I didn’t know what the problem was. I just switched off the heater and I continued showering with cold water.
“By the time I was showering, Georgina had woken up and gone to the kitchen. When we were going, she made some doughnuts. And I found her eating doughnuts. Then I told her, ‘Before we make breakfast, then we can go to the beach, let us pray.’
“We prayed. And we got into the kitchen. And that is how her life ended.
“In the hospital, we were in pain, but Georgina was in much more pain than me. And every morning, every time, if she just got a little nap, she’d tell me, ‘Mum, I saw ourselves in front of the church, giving a testimony.’ She would sleep again a little and tell me, ‘Mum, it’s morning. We are not going to church.’ Even though she is not here today [in church], I’m here to give that testimony on her behalf and on my behalf.”
The injuries sustained
“As I lay in that bed in the KNH ICU – Burns Unit, Prime Care – I was a log. I was a gunia (sack) of something that could only be pushed. I could not even lift my waist. Everything had to be done to me. Many times I got stressed, but I told God that at this point in time, I’m backstage. Just take charge. My entire body, except my face and my neck, had wounds. The skin for grafting was to be taken from each and every single place which was not burnt, which was also not enough.
“So, they could cut, and when a place is almost healed, they would cut again. So, I went through pain.
“When we arrived in India, the first thing that they had to do was to remove the dressings so that they could see what they were going to do.
“At the ICU, they removed the dressings while I was watching. Adding to the pain with which I had travelled with, it was pain. It was painful, and that was the first time I saw part of my wounds. My right leg depressed me for some time. But this God has given me the strength to accept it as it is.
Joyce Ong’ombe (left), with her daughter Georgina Ooko, who died on January 14, 2025. The two suffered burns when a boiler exploded on in a Mombasa apartment they were staying in while on vacation.
“As for my left leg, all the flesh was deprived. What is there is a graft that has been put on top of the bones. The doctors told me that that flesh may not grow again. But just like the doctors thought that I could not make it, I want to defy this. And I want to believe in God; that he who formed me in my mother’s womb is going to form that flesh again.”
Losing my husband, our two children, and my parents in quick succession.
“Then the time came when, through an accident, he [my husband George Ooko] went with the [two] children.
“As if that was not enough, six months later, I lost my parents. At this point in time, I was 31 years old. My sisters got scared. They did not know what to tell me. And they were quiet.
“I lived giving advice to myself, with a seven-month-old child [Georgina] in my hands. You are young, you have a baby, you don’t have a job. At that time, I was employed by TSC [Teachers Service Commission]. I was teaching at home. But when they died, I did not want to go back.
Manage stress
“In my life, one of the ways that I’ve used to manage stress is what we were taught in school – avoidance method. I’ve always tried to avoid anything that can bring me down. That is how I quit that job, I came back to a rental house with a child of seven months.
“[Georgina] was my life. Everything I did, I did with her in mind. She made me whole. She made me not feel widowed. When she was one year old, she came to the bedroom, and found me with a picture of her siblings -- one year old. She took that picture and kept it upside down and just hugged me. I’d never stopped mourning my children and my husband. But anytime should find me low, she would hold me and tell me, ‘Mum, we are here, and we are going to make it. And I love you. And I’m going to protect you from anything. Anyone who can come near you with any bad intention will meet my wrath.’”
Starting a new life
“I’m back. I’m not fully healed. I still have some wounds on my arm and my thigh. But I’m trusting God the wounds are going to dry. The burns, even the way I’ve been sitting here [at the altar of Lavington SDA church], I already have what they’re calling a contracture. The muscles contract, and it is painful. But every time I’m in such pain, I only call upon the name of the Lord.
“I need prayers… because it is known that I’m back in the house. And the house that I knew that I had someone that I could talk to, who was Georgina, she’s not there.
“It’s not going to be easy. As days go by and I remain in that house alone, it’s not going to be easy. But I trust God in heaven, that He will still hold my hand in a manner that He understands best.
“As for me, I cannot tell.”
“The only hope for a parent is having children, seeing them grow, have careers, and holding your grandchildren. That is something, I think, I can only see as Moses did to Canaan. But that does not make God a lesser God. He’s still God in my life. The Bible tells us that those who are for us are more than those who are against us. It is a testimony in my life that as much as I am like a barren woman, the people who have surrounded me this particular time, I could not have given birth to all those children; a sign that God still provides even when you feel you've lost all.”
Why I am staying strong despite tragedy
“I know God knows me. He knew me before I was conceived in my mother’s womb, informed my bones.
“I believe the God who knew when I was born, and what I have gone through up to today, is still the same God and He still has a plan for me. May His plan in my life come to completion so that I get to know: Who is Joyce? Why is Joyce going through all these things?”
