A tragic fatality on the increasingly fatal Nairobi-Mombasa highway, what they call a 'motorway' here but which, apart from the entrance to Kenya's two main cities, has only two lanes of traffic.

And even though it has recently been widened, there is little one can do when a tractor-trailer overturns and its trailer becomes a bowling ball gone mad, turning the unfortunate vehicle proceeding in the opposite direction into a skittle.

Add to this the fact that the highway in Kenya is the place where all kinds of animals can cross, from elephants to giraffes, camels to mere cows and goats, and hardly anyone respects the speed limit, and it is easy to understand why, since the beginning of the year, we are already approaching 2000 deaths in a country that does not yet have traffic flows at the level of Western countries.

So it happened yesterday, theory turned into drama and the accident cost the lives of three Belgian tourists, a parent and two children aged 10 and 17, and the driver of the minibus taking them on safari. Police in the village of Samburu, between Mariakani and Voi, on the way to the two national parks of Tsavo East and West, confirmed the dynamics of the accident.

The trailer, heading to Nairobi from Mombasa, collided head-on with the van. As reported by the Daily Nation newspaper, the truck allegedly tried to avoid a cow crossing the road and lost control of the vehicle, whose trailer overturned and hit the van with the tourists.
On the same stretch of road, 21 people died last week in a head-on collision between a bus and a truck. The Kenyan government has announced a contract to a Korean company to build the toll motorway that will connect the capital with the country's first port.

This may be the beginning of an era when we will read less news like this.