The following story was submitted to The Weight She Carries by a reader who requested to remain anonymous.
I was born into a polygamist family. We were 16 children born to two mothers and my parents struggled to provide for us because we were so many.
By the time I was born, my dad had already stopped working. My mother was a farmer and so was the other mother. We depended on farming for food. There was no income. Whatever was farmed, we consumed.
I had to stop school in Form 2 because there wasn’t enough money for me to continue. I was told that I needed to wait for my older brother to finish school since he was a year ahead of me. If my father found some money, then I could go back to school.
So, I stayed home and worked, but I would attend school for a few weeks each term.
I didn’t perform well in my final exams and I couldn’t take the exams again because there was no money for that. So, I decided to head to the city to live with my older sister. I found work as a house help.
While living there, I met a man. We started dating, and after some time, I discovered that I was pregnant. I was naive and just a village girl who didn’t know much.
When my sister discovered that I was pregnant, she told me I couldn’t live with her anymore and she wanted to send me back to the village. I begged her to allow me to speak with the father of my baby and see what I could arrange.
I told him I had no place to stay and he told me to move in with him. I was 21 at the time.
Things were usually okay, but sometimes they weren’t. But I had to stay because I had nowhere else to go. When my son was about eight months old, I went to the market to buy some fruits. When I came back to the house, I found that my boyfriend had packed everything and left. My baby and I were left in that house with nothing. No furniture, nothing. All that was left in the house were a few dishes.
He didn’t explain why he left, he just told me he couldn’t stay with me any longer and just wanted to go. I asked him what I had done, he said nothing.
It was in the middle of the month and he told me that by the end of the month I needed to leave because that was when the lease was up. I didn’t even wait for the end of the month because I didn’t have any money, which I relied on him for.. I went back to my sister and explained what had happened. She told me I should pack my bags and go back to the village. I tried to plead with her but she said no. She wasn’t ready to take me in. Nobody in my family wanted to take me in.
So I went back home and asked my mother to look after my son for me so I could go back to Nairobi to look for a job. She agreed, but my older brother found out and convinced my mother to change her mind because he said my child was my responsibility and I couldn’t leave my child with her. I wasn’t happy but I had no choice. I went back and took my son with me to the city.
By this time, I had made a friend in the city and I went to live with her in a slum. She had a boyfriend and he would check on us and bring us food. He was also paying her rent, and after a while, he moved all of us to a better place.
My friend soon got married and it was just me and my son again. I still kept in contact with her and her boyfriend and the man kept providing us with food and other necessities.
I didn’t know at the time that he was a drug smuggler. I broke ties with them because I didn’t want to be involved in their business. I moved to another part of the country and settled there for a few years, but moved back to the city eventually.
Over the course of time, I met another man and we became friends and eventually began dating. He was the kind of man who would go through my call logs in my phone to see who I was talking to.
One day he discovered that there was a lady who called me whom he knew. The lady had called me to ask how I knew him. He told me that there was nothing between him and that woman and that he hadn’t had an affair with her. After some time, the lady began to call me quite often. A second one started calling, too. My boyfriend and I were not living together so I didn’t know all of the things he did.
When my boss said that he wanted to give me a full week off so I could rest, I decided I would go visit the women that were calling me and two of them agreed.
One invited me to her house and we talked about the man. I asked her for proof so I could believe her. She took me to her bedroom and showed me his clothes in her closet.
As for the second woman, we planned a day and we met in a shopping mall and went to her house. I saw the same thing. His clothes and his shoes were there. In fact, there was a pair of shoes that I had bought for him in her closet.
It turned out he was a community husband. He had three women and I was the fourth. So, I went home and I didn’t say anything. I told myself I would wait until he came to my house and I would ask him up front then.
What I didn’t realize at that time was that I was pregnant. I was just a few weeks along and I was feeling sick. After I went back to work, I was having some pain on the right side of my stomach. I told my boss and it turned out that it was an ectopic pregnancy. I had to have emergency surgery because my fallopian tube had ruptured by the time I got to the hospital.
I didn’t tell my boyfriend anything because I was still angry about what he was doing. When he finally did come to my house and asked why I had not been answering his calls, that’s when I explained to him what had happened.
The three other women and I became friends. One of them decided that she no longer wanted to have anything to do with this man so she went on with her life. That left me and the other two women. Over the course of time, these two women became pregnant around the same time and I decided to wait until the kids are born so I could see if the kids belonged to him.
The first one was a girl and the second one was a boy. I asked my boyfriend about the babies and he confessed that they were his children. That’s when I told him I wanted to end the relationship. He told me I could not do that. He was an abusive person. He was emotionally and physically abusive. I remember one time he slapped me and I reported him to the police. Even after being arrested he still wanted to be in the relationship.
I decided to move far away. I moved at 1 a.m. so that nobody would see me move. To my surprise, one day I heard a knock on the door, and when I opened the door it was him. He pushed his way in and was upset that I wasn’t opening the door for him. He told me that he would be visiting me anytime he wanted and that we were still in a relationship. I agreed for the sake of peace. I didn’t want drama.
I decided to go back to the village to escape him completely. I didn’t go to my family home and it was a good thing because the man came looking for me there. That’s when I decided I was going to be alone. I didn’t want anything to do with any man. If any man called me to talk to me about wanting relationship, I would automatically block them.
But one of my friends said that I shouldn’t think that way. She said there so much in life to enjoy and that I was still young and needed to have someone. She said love doesn’t have an age. I was 38.
She kept insisting and said that I should try online dating. So my friend introduced me to a dating site but I thought, “If people you know treat you terribly, what about the people you don’t know?” She told me to just give it a try and helped me register. That was 2016.
In 2017, I met an American man and we started to talk. But in a Facebook group there was this woman from South Africa, and for some reason, I asked her about this man. She said they had been talking for some time. I was surprised and I asked her to send me some screenshots of their conversations. When I confronted him, he denied it at first but later confessed.
Soon afterwards, I met someone else from England. By this time, I wasn’t expecting much but he offered to come and visit me. He would stay in a hotel and he asked if I could pick him up from the airport when he came. I said no, he should take a cab. He asked if I could make the arrangements for a cab and again, I refused. I suspected he was a liar and a player. Anyway, he arrived and stayed at a hotel and I went to meet him there for breakfast one day.
During his first visit he stayed for two weeks. I thought that was too long, but he would come to see me at work and would spend the day with me and then he would go back to his hotel. The day he was going back, I followed him to the airport and saw him off.
That’s when I reflected on his visit and the conversations we had. I told him that I didn’t trust men but he assured me that he was different. So that’s how the relationship started. We’ve been together for almost three years and since then he has been coming to visit me every 3 months.
He calls every evening and gives me attention that I have never received before. At first, I was wondering what kind of a man calls every evening before he goes to bed. I thought maybe it was something white men did.
Now we are engaged. He found a place for us to live. The place I used to live in was only big enough for me and my son. So he offered to get me a place where he would pay the rent that was big enough for him as well so that when he comes to visit, he no longer has to stay in a hotel. Now the family members who once wanted nothing to do with me are beginning to call me again. I don’t know why they’re now calling me, but I have asked God to give me a heart to forgive. I’ve decided to forgive and forget what they did to me. I’m happy that my story has a happy ending. I was once suicidal, but I have finally found real love.
