Three students who went missing after a forest adventure in Mt Kenya, Karatina, Nyeri County, were finally rescued on Saturday after four days in the jungle.
Four days without food, the boys told members of the press that they survived by the grace of God.
17-year-old Anthony Muhoro, Jackson Karuri, 17, and David Mukoma Kinyua, 20, went missing on May 4.
Muhoro is a Form Three student at Gitunduti Secondary School, Karuri is also a Form Three but at Ihwagi Secondary School while Kinyua is a student at Nyeri National Polytechnic.
Also found alive were two dogs that were in the company of the three when they were reported missing.
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The rescue team comprised of police officers who after four days of futile search deployed a National Police Service chopper to locate the students.
In the Saturday search, the Nation reports, the officers teamed up with Kenya Wildlife Service and Kenya Forest Service rangers to comb the forest in search of the students who were on the verge of despair.
The aerial and ground search efforts bore fruits yesterday.
In an interview with the local publication, Muhoro revealed that they were hiking when they lost their way back home.
“It was by the grace of God that we survived for four days without food and other necessities. We thought we were going to die and kept praying,” Muhoro said in a phone interview.
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“We literally groped in the dark after losing our way back home. We survived on water and wild fruits since we had not carried any food.”
According to the student, the trio entered the forest through Ragati gate but couldn’t trace their way home hours later.
“We found ourselves deep into the dense woods. I don’t know how far it was from the edges of the forest but we were exhausted,” he said.
“We could not even tell the time since it was constantly dark. That is when panic set in.”
They could not communicate with anyone back at home as their mobile phones lost signals.
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“We started moving in the forest, literary going in circles in a desperate attempt to find our way out,” Muhoro said.
Days later as they moved around the forest with the hope of finding an exit, they ‘miraculously’ met some police officers and forest rangers who alerted the rest of the search team.
Mathira East Police Commander James Baraza, who led the operation, said the trio’s disappearance was reported at Karatina Police Station the same day they went missing and a search operation launched immediately.
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