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Forty-five pilgrims from Botswana, along with the driver, were killed when the bus fell from an overpass into a rocky ravine in South Africa. The only survivor was a young girl.
By John Eligon and Yvonne Mooka
Report from Molepolole, Botswana
Lauryn Siako is the rare 8-year-old girl who jumps out of bed so she can go to church, her relatives said. She loves to sing, dance, and worship.
So when her church leaders announced they would resume the massive annual Easter pilgrimage to church headquarters in South Africa this year, after a four-year hiatus due to Covid-19, Lauryn begged her mother to let her in for the first time.
Lauryn and her grandmother boarded a bus in their hometown of Molepolole, Botswana, on Wednesday night with 43 confreres from St. John’s Christian Church. Engenas Zion, thrilled by the experience of a lifetime.
But the next morning, Lauryn was the only one of the forty-five passengers still alive.
The driver lost control of the bus on a sharp curve and rolled down an overpass on Mmamatlakala Mountain in northeastern South Africa, plunging 165 feet into a rocky ravine and setting it on fire. The driver and all his passengers perished, except, inexplicably, for the wiry woman who had just obtained her passport a week earlier and had kept it close. She escaped with minor lacerations, South Africa’s health government said.
“How did you get off that bus?” Lauryn’s mother, in tears, told Gaolebale Siako on Friday, sitting in the modest space where Lauryn lived with her grandmother in Molepolole, repeating a question she kept asking herself.
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