The father of one of the three students who died in a boat tragedy at Lake Victoria over the weekend is struggling to come to terms with the accident saying he has just lost a huge investment as his son was set to graduate as a medical doctor this year.
Those who died were Mordecai Amaya, 25, Hezron Zavon, 22 and John Meraba, 22.
Amaya’s father Richard Singa has told the Daily Nation that his son was just about to start working as an intern.
“My son was a final year medicine and research student at the University of Nairobi, I have lost an investment,” said Singa.
“The students completed their mission yesterday and decided to take a boat ride. Many had gone into the lake and returned to the shores safely. My son’s group was the last to take a boat ride, unfortunately, the boat capsized and he was among the three who perished,” he added.
The students were part of a mission of 230 that had attended a 14 day evangelism mission in Busia courtesy of the Port Victoria Seventh Day (SDA) church in Budalangi. They were then baptized at the lake on the last day of the mission.
Seven of them including the three who died decided to take a boat trip in the lake. Those who survived say the boat capsized as they were taking selfies.
Apart from being a medical student, Mordecai was also a computer scientist and programmer on the side. His social media pages have since been deleted but his personal website where he describes himself as a doctor and programmer is still running.
“I am among the few who are stretching their hands in an attempt to bridge the gap between medicine and computer science because I believe that the collaboration of these disciplines will revolutionize health care. As such, I spend most of my research efforts in finding ways on how concepts such as machine learning and bioinformatics can be used in improving medical research, diagnosis and service delivery,” a bio on his website says.
“I once had a patient called Jack and he was always dull. On investigation, I realized that he never took a break from his work and I recommended that he plays once in a while. Following my own advice; when I am not studying or practicing medicine, I spend my time drawing and doing some graphic design. I also ‘goof’ around by creating and playing indie games in javascript and python. I have linked a few of them my arcade below the rest can be found at my github repos, feel free to try them out but avoid the tic-tac-toe as it is unbeatable. Lastly, I would like to say that HTML is not a programming language and PHP is rubbish, change my mind,” says his bio