I have also learnt the true meaning of love and friendship as evidenced by those who have supported me in the face of my struggles and when my marriage disintegrated. As I recount the circumstances under which my marriage split up, it is my wish that it will inspire someone to start their own journey to forgiveness and restoration as opposed to bitterness, anger and death.
I have two boys. My first-born is 23 years and a law graduate, while my second-born is 20 years old and a medical student at the University of Nairobi. In 2006 while working as a teacher and counsellor in a local high school, I met an orphan – a girl – living in a children’s home and I took a liking to her. I love my sons deeply but I had always wanted a girl to complete my brood. This was my chance to make up for it and I sat down with my husband and children and enquired from them whether we could take her in as one of our own. They said yes.
From the first day, we seemed to bond perfectly. She was 16 years old – three years older than my eldest child – and her name, just like those of my boys, started with the letter ‘M’. Additionally, we bonded easily over studies because being a teacher, I could not imagine any of my children faltering in their education. Many times as we cooked in the kitchen, we would talk emotionally over how I would give her away to her new family on her wedding day just as her biological mother would. Our new family was thriving.
Shortly after taking her in, I resigned from my job as a teacher. The previous year, I had suffered multiple fractures from a near-fatal accident and I needed time to recuperate. I was still walking on crutches and found it challenging to keep up with the pace of my previous life.
Instead of resting on my laurels, I enrolled for an undergraduate degree in education at the Kenya Methodist University in Meru. I would be away from home sometimes up to three weeks or longer at a time because of my studies.
It was while travelling back from one of these trips in 2008, just after my daughter had finished high school, that I received a phone call from one of my neighbours. We were not particularly close but when she asked me about the girl I was living with, I casually replied to her that she was my daughter. She prodded further and I told her she was my adopted daughter.
Her reaction was one of surprise because at that point she revealed, and I quote: “Just know that girl you are living with is not your daughter but your-co wife.”
I was shocked. I never would have suspected anything underhand between my husband and my daughter. I decided to investigate and true to my neighbour’s warning, I discovered cl@ndestine correspondence between them.
In anger, I confronted them and to my shock, my husband blamed me for the aff@ir saying I had brought the girl to him. I demanded that the girl move out of my house. Shoving me, he replied that I could kick her out of the house but never out of his heart.
While the bitterness I had against them and the hurt I felt in my heart has thawed, I would be lying if I said I was strong about it when it was happening. Up to this day I have never understood the level of pain I felt. I never imagined, as a Christian couple who had preached for 17 years, grown together in salvation having met in the high school Christian Union where my husband had been the chairman, this would be the hurdle we would have to cross, moreover due to the actions of someone I considered not only a child, but my child and student as well.
