Winfred Musembi, 48, from Machakos county was divorced by her husband because she always gave birth to girls and not boys. All was well in her marriage until the day she gave birth to her fourth girl which angered her husband of 15 years, David Musembi, who kicked her out of their matrimonial home in Katumani.
Speaking in an interviewm, Winfred said the most painful thing about their divorce was the fact that her husband remarried on the same day he kicked her out of the house. The mother of four lives in misery unable to come to terms how her marriage of 15 years was thrown to the dogs just because she could not give birth to a son. “My husband had been pressuring me to have a son. But every time I got pregnant, they turned out to be girls,” she said while weeping in pain.
“Things worsened when I gave birth to my fourth born. He asked, a girl again? Am finished with you, those were my husbands words”, she said. Winfred who is physically challenged after one of her leg was amputated in 2006, said she had been living with her mother-in-law who had accommodated her and her three daughters but after a while the husband forcefully evicted her.
Her daughters now live under the mercy of their grandmother. “My situation is not good, I am ill and my children had to drop out of school, we don’t have food, we go days without food,” When she was asked what happened to her fourth daughter, she said “my daughter succumbed to illness”.
Winfred currently lives at Vota in Machakos county with her mother. For over ten years, she has never seen her daughters and she is not allowed to even visit them. She is now calling for well wishers and the government to intervene her situation. All that she wants is to be reunited with her children.