Over the past week my team and I have been reporting on the floods laying waste to parts of Kenya.

On Tuesday, we visted the Mai Mahiu area, where around 50 people were killed when a deluge swept villagers away as they slept.

We followed rescue workers down along the blasted banks of the river, they were carrying shovels, rakes and sticks to poke through the branches of uprooted trees.

We stopped at an enormous mound of broken branches, covering a crushed house, we are told.
A family of six lived in the house and they may be buried under this mound.

Rescue workers called in a bulldozer, which has been removing the debris in an attempt to find the family.

On the far side of the river, corrugated iron roof panels lurch down over the husk of a house still standing.
Veronica Karanja, 17, and her father David have come back to view the damage.

That dreadful night the teenager was swept out by the water but managed to hang on to a tree until it subsided.

When she made it back, she couldn’t find her father, until he called out. He had been hit in the head and lost hold of her 9-year-old brother Paul.

David has just returned from the morgue to view the body, his eyes cast down, his arm in a sling.
The family lived off their livestock but it is all gone now. Nine-hundred hens and 21 pigs whisked away by the water – only five are left.