It is the Christmas season when city dwellers flock to the village to share in the festivities with their rural counterparts. But for some bachelors, it's the time to take advantage of young girls who are eager to escape the gruelling rural life for the city.
For those who were born in rural villages and whose Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) results did not guarantee them higher education to venture out to other towns, the hope of exploring the world makes them vulnerable to smooth-talking city men.
"It is this anxiety to leave the village that results in many girls falling for the urbanite relationship hyenas that land in the villages during Christmas and New Year holidays," says Ms Cecilia Gitu, a member of the Federation of African Women Educationists.
Ms Gitu, a former principal of Nginda Girls High School, tells Nation.Africa that beautiful girls fresh out of school and from humble backgrounds become easy prey for these men.
"These are girls who cannot afford make-up...do not have the finances to update their fashion desires...," she says.
Ms Gitu adds that the girls become prey when men from urban areas land in the villages, and many are easily lured into temporary relationships that have no future.
"It starts with those girls getting some monetary favours, then the promise to be rescued from the vagaries of rural life, as well as good life in the city," she says.
For Ms Tabitha Wairimu, 21, from a village in Kirinyaga County, a chance meeting with a 32-year-old man in Kagio Village in 2023 changed her life – and not for the better.
"It was one year after I had graduated from a local day school. I had scored a D- (minus) grade. It did not secure higher education and my parents are not well off," she says.
At Christmas that year, she was lured by a man from the city who promised to help her find a job.
"Looking around the village, I was dreadful of what I could turn to if I stayed here for long. Most of my age mates who had not managed to proceed with higher education were already were mothers, some married to men who had dropped out of primary school to become casual labourers in the village," she says.
So when this man, who worked as an electrician in Nairobi, promised to take her out of the village and to a job as a shop attendant, she did not think twice.
"I remember it was on December 24, 2023 when he made that offer. I did not even inform my parents...I just left the village with him on January 3, 2024," she recalls.
"That is how I became a wife instead of a worker. There was no love between us. Mine was a naive desire to venture into the world of opportunities where I could earn my own money and rush back to help my parents ease the burden of poverty," she says.
Pregnant and tired of trying to be a wife, she left the man in May and returned to her parents’ home.
"I gave birth to a baby girl in mid-September and now, as a single mother, I am eerily watching another Christmas come and as sure as there is day and night, more girls will walk my path with the same results," she says.
Ruiru sub-county police chief Alexander Shikondi admits that his work in urban centres has exposed him to many incidents where he has had to rescue young women who have been abandoned in either boarding houses or rented accommodation after being lured out of the village with the promise of a good life.
"It is a happening...Most of these girls leave the village in the company of young and elderly men in the hope of getting connected to jobs. Once in the towns, they are transformed into wives and before they know it, they are in despair, pregnant and homeless," Mr Shikondi says.
The senior police officer says he has on several occasions had to part with his own money to offer the young women fare back to their villages.
"In some occasions, you find some cases where the victims were minors and the painful process of helping them reunite with their parents start as we seek out the culprits to charge them in court," he said.
“This tragedy can only be mitigated through sensitising young girls that they should not rush to accept offers from men if it involves them moving out together to the towns,” Mr Shikondi says.
He said parents and other enlightened neighbours should sensitise girls to the fact that accommodation in search of work is the bait that makes them wives under duress.
Pastor Winnie Muasya of the Living God Sanctuary in Nairobi, who also doubles as a family counsellor, says married women also fall prey to randy men during the holiday season.
"I have incidents where some goat wives visit relatives and take alcohol in the name of festivities. The confessions that follow later are mind-boggling,” she says.
"What would your advice be to a married woman who confesses that she took alcohol at a Christmas event, one thing led to another and she got pregnant?"
Ms Muasya says the most sought-after advice is whether to procure an abortion or carry the pregnancy to term and risk a DNA crisis if the husband is suspicious.
"That is when you realise that the Bible, wisdom and general knowledge combined are not adequate to serve the flock," she says.
"My nightmare caught up with me in Mombasa in 2016...I had some small savings...there was this girl I had not quite decided whether to marry though she was pressuring me to," recalls Dave* (not his real name).
One day, as the couple were sipping beers at a hotel in Mombasa, a flamboyant politician from Kiambu walked in, accompanied by his many bouncers.
"Countless times I had heard many people say my girlfriend was beautiful...but hearing it being said by the politician was frightening. The politician bought many beers for me," he says.
"To cut a long story short, the woman left me and did not travel back with me to Naivasha where we lived in a rented house. Instead, she moved to Kiambu and was given a good job. Although we keep in touch, it is only because she wants to know whether I found another woman," he says.
