A MOTHER’S ENDURANCE

Ann was brought up in Kisumu county. At around 14-17 years, she faced troubles. Her parents became sick and she had to take long breaks from school to take care of them.

Unfortunately, she soon became orphaned and this was the start of her nightmares. She was taken in, in what at the start seemed a fortunate occurrence, by her father’s brother to live with his family.

She was made a house help while still a minor. She had to take care of the cousins with no pay and no respect. She had no option but to go to her grandmother’s where she tried to put up with her for a while before schools were to reopen. However, when it was time for form ones to join secondary school, she had no financial assistance from her grandmother and she went back to her father’s brother to ask for some land to be sold so that she could pay fees.

The uncle was unwilling to help. She therefore saw marriage as an opportunity for economic betterment. This was because of peer pressure from other girls in the village who seemed to have life solved after getting married. She managed to get a man from Siaya and they put up at a rental house around Chemelil roundabout in Kisumu County. Here, her husband started a motorbike job. At first, the marriage was okay then after the birth of the firstborn child issues arose.

The husband started beating her for unjustifiable reasons. In some instances, she would have her lie on a table where she would be caned for anything the husband would see as a mistake. This would range from talking back at him to getting home after him.

As any other person would, she started seeking ways of bettering her economic state. Like other women around Chemelil, she started selling milk. This milk would be transported from Nandi hills and they would buy it while en-route to Kisumu City as early as 4am. This introduced a challenge as it meant new numbers would have to be saved on her phone.

Her business would have her out till late and the husband decided to set a curfew at 8 pm. If she arrived any minute past the set time, she would find her husband already waiting for her in the house with a cane in hand. Efforts to explain to him that she had remained behind to look for a customer’s change or that she had many customers as the only seller remaining proved futile.

At a point she had to have him accompanying her to her place of work so that he would stop accusing her of infidelity. She was not allowed to have contacts of anyone outside her husband’s side of the family. One morning, she received a call from an unknown number and it was the milk delivery guys. She picked up and she was told to go to the main road to pick the milk up. While away, her husband came back to the house from his morning round of motorbike business. He saw the number and when she came back he raised issues and beat her up. This is despite confirmation that it was indeed the delivery guys from Nandi hills who were coming for their debt. It was at this point that she decided that she had had enough and she was going to leave but because of her children she stayed and they sought marriage counselling from a local church elder.

After the talk from the church elder he pretended to have calmed down and they went back to their home. The following morning however, after his morning round of motorbike business, he came back for breakfast as was the norm, and requested for Anne to accompany him. They rode his motorbike to the sugarcane plantations owned by Chemelil Sugar Factory and when they got there, he brought up the unknown number issue that had been deemed settled.

He asked whether there was anything she was hiding concerning that number and she was truthful and said she was not. However, the husband did not accept. Two passersby came and they inquired what was happening. Anne was terrified and was crying but the husband shoved the passersby off.  

After that, no other person passed by that plantation and that was when he started fighting her. After a while he put his knee on her neck and started searching for something in his pockets to no success. He told Anne that the God she prays to must have helped her as that was to be the day she was to be killed. Anne started sweating and they went back home pretending nothing had happened.

She planned to leave but she could not do it immediately as he expected it. After three days of transferring her clothes, she left without her children on a Thursday and went for five days. When she came back, she found that her husband had decided to take the children to their grandmother. Anne requested him to allow her to join them upcountry since staying there with a blackeye was embarrassing her.

This was the beginning of among other troubles, stalking and snitching. When she would go to the river for the daily washing with the children and the few livestock, the mother-in-law would inform the husband that she was wasting time with other women gossiping by the river. At times her husband would visit and she would pass her house and go to her mother’s for the whole day. He would then wake her up harshly at 3 am demanding that she opens the door and insinuating that she was having men over.

One morning she decided to leave. She packed her clothes and the kids’ clothes and unfortunately at the entrance she met one of her in-laws who raised the alarm and the whole clan pounced on her with blows. She got so mad and decided that she was not going to die cause of her children anymore and she had hope that her children would not die without her. She split the clothes and took her clothes and went to her cousin’s house in Kisumu where she did odd jobs at low wages for survival. She however had to move out and rent her own soon because her cousin’s husband started courting her.

After progressing economically, she decided to go for the rest of the children who by now had moved back to Muhoroni. She was, unfortunately, able to get only two out of the three she had at that time. She left very quickly to Ahero junction on a motorbike to catch a matatu to Rongo.

When he later came looking for her there, a case was done by the council and she corroborated the story to the elders who ruled that the differences were irreconcilable. Anne then set out to plan to take her third child and after many attempts, she was finally successful when she was in school. She arrived at the school when no teacher was still in the compound and left with her on a motorbike to Kisumu. She thereafter moved to Nairobi where she started doing odd jobs to survive.

She at a point had to work in a bar to get the children something to eat. Her breakthrough came when her daughter wrote a note and dropped it inside the Polycom talking boxes indicating their troubles. At the moment, the daughter is being paid for school fees by Polycom and she is still struggling with the rest of the children.