By Kepher Otieno - Reporter
Kenya, 15 April 2026 - In Nyakwere trading centre in Kisumu County, the rain has become something heavier than weather after uprooting hundreds of families out of their homesteads.
It is now memory, fear—and for hundreds of families, a daily reminder that everything they owned can still be taken again in lower Nyakach village and West affected by freak floods.
The floods that surged from the swollen banks of the Sondu Miriu River did not arrive with warning loud enough to save everyone.
They crept into homes first, then rushed through them with force. When they finally receded, they left behind a broken settlement where life continues—but only barely.
Today, Nyakwere Market Centre is no longer a marketplace. It is a crowded field of survival for the affected families camping in the livestock market and some at the trading center.
Iron sheets lean into each other like exhausted bodies. Tarpaulins tents sag under trapped rainwater.
Gunia sacks, once used for grain, now serve as walls for families who lost everything in a single night as their refuge.
Smoke from small fires curls through damp air as children sleep on muddy ground, their lives paused in displacement. Yet it’s all due to vagaries of nature.
“We did not even have time to cry,” says Joan Okumu, 36, her voice shaking as she adjusts a thin blanket over her children at Nyakwere livestock market.
She recalls with a sickening nolstagia, “The water came into the house, and within minutes it was waist-deep. We ran. That is all we did—run.”
She pauses, looking at the ground. “When I turned back, my home was gone. Not damaged—gone. Today we sleep with water in our dreams. We don’t know what next.”
Joan now shares a cramped tarpaulin shelter with her children. At night, she says, sleep does not come easily.
“When it rains, I hold my children tight,” she says. “Because in my mind, the water is still chasing us.”
For 67-year-old Daniel Odongo, the loss is quieter but deeper. He sits on a sack of soaked clothing, staring at nothing in particular.
“This is not life,” he says slowly. “We are just waiting. The river took everything, and we are still here, but not really living.”
Around him, the camp breathes in fragments—coughs, whispered conversations, children crying softly in the night. Each sound is part of a larger grief that has no single voice.
Nearby, 67-year-old Jenipher Akeyo counts her losses differently—not in objects, but in what those objects once meant.
“My chickens paid school fees,” she says.
“My crops fed my family. My hands gave me dignity.”
She shakes her head.
“Now I depend on others for everything. Even salt.”
More than 240 families are currently sheltering in Nyakwere, while over 400 households across the wider area have been affected by the floods, according to local authorities.
Area Chief Tobias Polo says the scale of destruction is growing faster than the response.
“We are hosting more than 240 displaced families here at the trading centre alone,” he says.
“Across the region, over 400 households have been affected. People lost homes, livestock, food reserves—everything.”
He pauses, visibly weighed by the situation.
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“Some assistance has started coming in, but it is not enough. Families are sleeping hungry. Children are exposed. We urgently need food, clean water, blankets, and medical support.”
Relief has trickled in through partners including the Kenya Red Cross Society, which has reached about 50 of the most vulnerable households with emergency supplies.
But officials say the gap between need and assistance remains wide.
Kisumu County special programmes coordinator Samwel Oron describes a situation that has stretched local capacity to its limit.
“Many of those displaced are still in market centres where they sleep without proper shelter,” Oron observed. “Some go hungry for days. The situation is very difficult.”
He adds that county teams are mobilising resources and appealing for support from well-wishers and humanitarian partners, but acknowledges that the scale of displacement is overwhelming.
“The numbers keep rising whenever it rains again,” he says. “What we are dealing with is not just displacement—it is prolonged suffering.”
At dawn, the camp reveals its hardest truths. Children ask when they will go home. Mothers stretch small food donations into meals that never feel enough.
Elders sit in silence, watching skies they no longer trust. Yet even here, fragments of humanity survive.
A woman shares a cup of porridge with a stranger’s child. A man returns a borrowed blanket without being asked.
A group of youths builds a small shelter together, piece by piece, as if rebuilding something larger than wood and plastic.
“We are tired,” Daniel Odongo says, looking toward the grey horizon.
“Every year the floods come. Every year we lose something. This time… it feels like everything.”
As evening falls, smoke rises again from scattered fires.
Children run briefly between shelters, their laughter piercing the weight of loss for a moment before fading back into the damp air.
Above Nyakwere, the sky remains heavy and uncertain.
And for the families here, survival is no longer measured by what was saved.
It is measured by what remains when everything else has been washed away.
As part of long-term efforts to curb recurring seasonal flooding, the government is accelerating plans to construct the Koru–Soin Dam, envisioned as a permanent solution to the crisis affecting communities downstream.
The project is expected to regulate water flow from the Sondu Miriu basin, reduce overflow during heavy rains, and protect vulnerable settlements like those in Nyakwere trading centre in Kisumu County. Authorities say the dam will also support irrigation, water supply, and energy generation, while enhancing climate resilience in flood-prone areas.
“Once completed, it is expected to significantly reduce displacement and recurring destruction caused by annual flooding," says Kisumu Governor Prof Anyang Nyong’o.
In the meantime, its survival, with the situation.
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