Woman in Machakos divorced for not bearing son pleads to see her girls

As lovebirds marked the Valentine’s Day, it is a profoundly sad day for one Winfred Musembi from Machakos County.

Winfred, 48, from Vota, says she was divorced by her husband of eight years for allegedly not bearing a boy child.

Memories of events that happened 15 years ago are still fresh in the mind of the mother of 4 girls; she says she was kicked out of the marriage with an immediate replacement.

” We formally married through a church wedding and our marriage was full of life until I gave birth to a fourth daughter. My husband was giving me a lot of pressure to bear him a son,” she told Citizen Digital.

With full knowledge that it is a man that determines gender of the child, Winfred kept praying that her husband would one day ‘come to his senses’.

To add salt to the injury, one of the four daughters succumbed to an illness which put the marriage even in more dire straits.

Her husband, David Musembi then opted to marry another woman in his desperate search for a son and this was the last stroke on the camels back, so to speak.

To make matters even worse, Winfred also fell ill which saw her spend most of her time admitted to Machakos Hospital.

Despite this, she says her husband brought the other woman to their home, and her children lived in agony.

In 2006, her left leg was amputated and she was discharged from hospital, but with nowhere to go.

Her mother in-law apparently came to her ‘rescue’ and accommodated Winfred and her three daughters.

However, they would sometimes go for days without food and the children had to drop out of school.

” I lived with my mother in law for some time, and most of the time we were forced to beg for food, as well as sleeping in the cold as we could not access the house,” she said.

“I was later forcefully evicted from our Katumani home in Machakos by my husband forcing me to leave my three daughters under the care of their step mother,” a tearful Winfred adds.

She now lives with her mother in Vota area which is eight kilometers away from where she once called home.

“For over 10 years now, I have never seen my daughters. He cannot allow them to even visit me. I live with my old and weary mother who helps me with everything,” said Winfred.

She is now calling on the human rights lobby groups to intervene so that she can be reunited with her children.