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Tales of women trapped in marriages to Mungiki sect men
The harsh realities of the underworld, most eloquently captured in the popular novel titled My life With a Criminal: Milly’s Story by reformed bank robber John Kiriamiti, riveted the country in the late 1980s.
The fictional recreation of the exploits of the former robber and his delicate relationship with his mistress, who had her loyalties torn between defending her man and her integrity, is being played out every day in the slums of Dandora.
The young mothers, meeting under the auspices of New Dandora 1 Development Group this week, tell terrifying tales of abuse and suffering tinged with regret for what their lives could have been were it not for their “marriage” to criminals, the majority of whom are members of the proscribed Mungiki quasi-religious outfit.
Effects of poverty
But as fate would have it, being a young girl born and bred in the crime dens of Nairobi’s Eastlands estates like Dandora, one does not stand much of a chance. Here, the effects of poverty, said to be spiralling by the day, have pushed the youths into devious activities that can only be summed up as suicidal.
Seventeen-year-old Tabitha, a mother of one who is still living with her man, says she is reluctant to leave even after finding a gun stacked in the man’s suitcase.
“He will kill me if I leave. He has warned me of that. He has made me swear never to reveal his identity and what he does. If he beats me and kicks me out of his house, I have nowhere to go with my baby. So I just stay and endure the beatings and abuse. It is better than being out there in the streets.”
Struggled to escape
Tabitha, like many other young mothers of Dandora, is stuck in an abusive relationship with a criminal. Most of the women in the group confessed that they had struggled to escape from the abusive captivity. Some have, however, not been so lucky and have been subjected to all manner of torture.
“I know of a girl who refused to stay when she learnt that her man was a gangster. She did not know that the man was also a Mungiki sect member. When she tried to leave, she was beaten so badly then the man unleashed his gang on her. They raped her in turns.
The girl is still there but it looks like she has lost her mind. She has no other home to go to, so staying with this man is the only way out,” narrated a young mother in the group. As the young mothers live to tell, becoming the wife of a gangster or of a Mungiki adherent is only one of the easy options out.
“People would like to pretend that this kind of thing does not exist. But when you have no other options but to succumb to the whims of the man who happens to be the father of your baby, what does the world expect you to do?” asked 19-year-old Njoki, a mother who broke away from her husband, a member of the dreaded Mungiki sect.
She added: “You cannot turn the other side and report him for being a gangster. How can you when he is the one who puts the food on the table?”
Dandora, renowned for its reputation of producing a never-ending police list of some of the country’s most wanted criminals, is a challenging estate to navigate, especially for one who is not an insider. It is in Dandora where tales of arbitrary shootings by gangsters, mugging and violent murders are reported. It is also here that the dreaded Mungiki sect is fully operational.
“Yes, we know that Mungiki are amongst us but nobody wants to stand up openly and admit it. What we see are many idlers in the estates, jobless men who spend the day idling about in groups, obviously taking drugs.
Then there are many young men who are matatu touts and drivers,” says Asha Ali, a social worker based in Dandora who is coordinating an association for women and young mothers caught up in abusive husbands involved in crime.
“This is what they masquerade as being, while in reality they are the members of the sect. These are the very same men who abduct our young girls in the name of marriage and mess them up,” she added.
Forced into crime
Poverty in Dandora is synonymous with crime. Because of poverty, the means to survival is strenuous and dubious. Many are youths forced into crime as a means of survival. For the young men, prowling the dark alleys to mug and rob is an easier engagement.
Young girls, however, are not so lucky. To survive, they are easily lured into prostitution or if they are “lucky” they are married to criminals, most of whom do not openly reveal their true identities to them — until it is too late.
“It is not easy to tell who is a member of Mungiki and who is not. The Mungiki are mainly smartly dressed and look neat and organised. They normally have money, which they have acquired from extorting innocent people.
“When he sees you in the estate and seduces you, you have no reason to suspect that he could be a thug until it is too late,” confessed Gertrude, yet another young mother previously married to a Mungiki sect member.
In Dandora, fear is hardly defined by contracting the dreaded HIV/Aids virus or by being arrested by the police, it has a different meaning.
“Even as we try to build awareness in these innocent girls that they can actually break free from their situations, we know that their biggest problem is fear. This fear comes in several phases. It is the fear of what the men with whom they are cohabiting can do to them.
“It is the fear of being attacked by the rest of the Mungiki gang for betraying a spouse but most importantly, it is the fear of not knowing where the next meal is going to come from and whether one will have a roof over their heads,” explained Asha.
Mothers agreed
Many of the young mothers agreed that they should have escaped from their spouses as soon as they learnt that they were thugs. However, many said they hesitated because of threats made to their lives.
“I should have left the day I discovered that he had a gun. But then he beat me so badly and made me promise that I will never leave him. He said that if I left, he would kill me or unleash members of his gang on my family and myself. “Even now as I speak, I am in fear of the unknown, worsened by the fact that I have his baby,” said Njoki, breaking into tears.
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