Weddings happen every day, but the bells seem louder on this one.
It is because it involves activist Dianah Kamande who, for close to a decade, has been the face of Kenyan widows and Gender-Based Violence (GBV) survivors.
She is now officially off the singles’ bracket. After picking herself up from a near-death experience in the hands of her late husband in 2013, Dianah has a soulmate.
At the time of writing this story, the wedding was scheduled to happen at Kasarani Stadium ballroom.
A considerable number of the bridal team comprised widows GBV survivors. The plan was to have an interdenominational service, owing to the number of friends Dianah has made in her award-winning and internationally acclaimed activism.
Come Together Widows and Orphans Organisation, a lobby she founded and where she is the director, has made major strides in advocating for widows. In 2018. She got a Head of State Commendation for her advocacy for widows.
She is also the founder of the Association of Survivors of Gender Based Violence, making her a familiar face among many downtrodden women.
Equally, Dianah is a board member of the Anti-Femal Genital Mutilation Board.
She has also authored a book, Scars of Honour that tells her story of going through GBV in her earlier marriage that lasted 10 years.
So, who stole Dianah Kamande’s mended heart?
It is a childhood friend; a former desk mate who used to sacrifice his lunch and government-given Nyayo milk for her. His name is Samson Waweru and he is a Kenya Defense Forces sergeant. He is typically a man of few words with an amiable spirit, as Dianah can attest.
“I have a partner I grew up with, played kalongolongo (childhood games) and schooled together in Ngunyumu Primary School in Korogocho, Nairobi. We were even desk mates and used to compete in academics,” Dianah says of her now lifetime partner she fondly calls Sam.
According to Dianah, Sam had a drive to be good to her from a tender age.
“He cared immensely, but I didn’t think much of it,” she offers. “We used to hide plastic tins which acted as plates in the class ceiling and Sam always ensured that he removed it for me. Every time Nyayo milk was served, he would come asking whether I got it, if it happened that I didn’t, he was caring enough to give me his.”
To her, he was just being a great desk mate.
“It feels good to know someone from childhood and realise she has not changed especially character-wise. She is still the kind and humble girl I knew. I have great genuine love for Dianah,” Sam told Lifestyle last week.
Dianah recalled a time in Class Four when they were going to Sunday school and Sam called out to his sister saying: “There comes my girlfriend, Dianah Kamande”.
Newly-wed couple, Dianah Kamande who is the founder of Cometogether Widows and Orphans Association and Samuel Waweru, a Kenya Defence Forces officer, during a past event.
Photo credit: Pool
“I really cried. I later reported him to our teacher,” she chuckles.
She was 10 and felt the discomfort of a pre-teen who is sensitive towards the opposite gender. But Sam wouldn’t stop referring to her as his.
“I tried to avoid him, but interestingly, in every class we moved to, the teacher paired us as desk mates. We only parted in Class Eight after streams were reduced from three to two,” she recalled.
She was outspoken and took up leadership positions, later being in the limelight, whereas Sam is a reserved sportsman who enjoys to work behind the scenes.
They parted ways as they headed to secondary school, but they would meet during schools holidays. After Form Four, each took a differnt trajectory and they lost touch.
When she was 30, a horrendous ordeal thrust her into the limelight in 2013. Her abusive marriage had taken a tragic turn. Her husband and father of her two daughters was baying for their blood.
“He came home one day wielding a sword, saying he wanted to kill the whole family,” she recalls.
He attacked her and while she was recuperating in hospital, he took his own life. The series of events traumatised their children.
The idea of forming an organisation was birthed right in her hospital bed when one day, some church members informed her that the in-laws had disinherited her; that they had broken into her house and carted away “our son’s” belongings.
Another section of widows listening in casually responded with statements like “stop worrying her with those stories; it’s a common practice and we were also disinherited”.
With a sling on one hand, a heavy head and weak muscles, Dianah could not marshall the strength for any debate, but the sad reality and normalisation of abuse formed a lump on her throat.
These are issues she had witnessed as a child in Korogocho, and gave her young self a reason to want to be a police officer who would attend to vulnerable women in the society.
“When I was discharged from the hospital, I asked to be visited by 15 widows. Instead 25 turned up. In subsequent meetings, the number escalated to 33 and then doubled to 66. By the time I realised, thousands of widows were flocking in for encouragement and ways to support each other,” she recalls as the explains the genesis of the Come Together organisation.
Before she knew it, the group covered all the 47 counties, was recognised in government circles and even international agencies.
To spice it up, the organisation hosts events like the Valentine’s Dinner where widows and survivors of GBV are treated to a special night every year at Safari Park Hotel.
She also decided to pursue education that her late husband had promised her in vain. She enrolled for a degree in peace and conflict studies at Nazarene University. She also earned other certificates and now is pursuing a degree in gender issues.
One time, when she was on a trip to the United Kingdom to receive one of her many awards, she found herself waiting for a layover flight in Doha and decided to check her Facebook account.
Dianah Kamande.
Photo credit: Pool
To her surprise, Sam had reached out. He said he was on a peacekeeping mission in Somalia.
“Immediately, I recalled the childhood mischief and how he irritated me,” she recalls. She was skeptical about maintaining contact with Sam but she played along.
In their chats, he reminded her of their early days, opened up about his life and even kept celebrating her birthday, sending her money for a cake. She had planned to celebrate with elderly widows in the village once she returned from the UK.
The day he left Somalia, he started another mission to find Dianah. She was gracious enough to accept a lunch date with him. The natural thing was to revisit their past then fill each other in on how life was treating them.
Both have a past of loss and grief as well as dysfunctional marriages. During that conversation, the two were reluctant about moving on, owing to the baggage of the past. They weren’t willing to trade their freedom and peace for another grown human.
“When you go through an experience, it sticks with you and in mind. We started our counseling session together. I felt I had overcome, but he was not healed completely. Naturally, I assumed the role of a mentor. Whenever she heard him revisiting the past, she would suggest an expert who could help him get over the aspect he was grappling with at that moment,” Dianah said.
She was an integral part of his healing. She also linked him up with men who have been through his kind of situation. But she didn’t know that she was making a bed for herself to lie on.
“I kept referring to him as a potential woman. I would tell him, ‘Why don't we attend this meeting? You might find a young widow whom you can marry,’” says Dianah, giggling.
For her, it was fulfilling to have managed to unveil the Sam she knew: the amiable, caring and unpretentious Sam.
In her circles, she introduced her as a former classmate. To her amazement, the staff at her orginisation started calling Sam “Uncle”.
“I guess people have a way of reading body language. If he comes here now, you’ll hear people calling him ‘Uncle,’” she said.
Then he started falling in love with her job. He admired how she transformed lives. Although he didn’t have the wherewithal to do it, he would support from the periphery.
He would drop her to rescue missions, provide security and attend meetings with members to give her moral support.
“Dianah is a great woman who has been independent for almost 10 years now. She can handle so much without asking for help unless I offer to help. I take this positively. I understand her and I accept her as one of the empowered women Kenya has. Besides running the organisation, she has great business acumen, believes in education and has a vision of establishing bookshops across the country among other ventures,” Sam said.
Being a Miss Independent, Sam’s helping hand jolts Dianah. She is slowly adapting to the pampering and the idea of stepping back to live, love and laugh.
Then Sam popped the big question. His proposal was simple but deep. It was just the two of them, seated in a restaurant at the Thika Road Kaso Gardens, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Without witnesses or fanfare, Sam went down on one knee.
A puzzled Dianah had a lot running through her mind. But being a person she had known almost all her life, she said “yes”.
Then the lengthy talks ensued on the bare minimums and how they’d run their lives together; their children, demanding jobs, family members and every nitty-gritty, conventional and unconventional principles and expectations.
Coming from a background of dysfunctional families, both understood too well the need to lay a solid foundation for the new chance at love and companionship.
“I accepted to be a mother to his daughter and him a father to my two girls,” Dianah Said.
“My daughters had long wanted me to remarry, but I wanted to be sure to usher them into a solid family, not a dysfunctional one like we had. I wanted a step-father who will respect them and who will be my good companion,” she added. She placed her confidence in Sam, who vowed to love, protect and support them all.
Sam says: “We believe we were meant to be together in life and that’s why God has brought us together finally after so many ups and downs in life. We have been through therapy and no one is going to bleed about their past on each other.”
Dianah’s decision, however, caused jitters in her group. Many wondered what would happen to the organisation with the exit of its founder from the widow’s club.
“The vulnerabilities have not ended with me getting married. I am a survivor and these scars will never go away, but my experience and how I rose from it can bring salvation to many others. I want to tell the widows that I will keep standing with you,” says Dianah, adding that the organisation has other remarried ex-widows.
She has, however, started grooming a number of members to take over the mantle in future as part of her retirement plan.
Careful to get everything right, the courting couple had sought expert advice on the issue of property ownership. A counsellor advised them to treat each other as people who own nothing; that whatever they had before meeting should remain as inheritance for their respective children as they focus on generating common wealth from scratch.
“He is 40 and I am 39 and we’re where people start life. We are walking down the aisle with nothing at all, just the two of us: very poor people who have accepted it and we have said together we’re going to start all over, not changing title deeds or other documents to factor in new status. Let’s start our lives and forget about property, what you and I have in the bank accounts,” said Dianah.
“We will be very aggressive because we own nothing,” she added.
“Widows often face a dilemma whenever they want to get into a new marriage as the in-laws of the deceased sometimes raise questions over ‘their’ wealth being taken over by another man. Let the wealth remain as the inheritance of your children as you get into another union,” she advised.
Sam adds: “It’s okay to remarry. Let no one stigmatise you because of moving on. You hold your key to your happiness. In life it comes to a time when you matter the most. It is about us, not about society.”
Learning from their past, the couple has learnt to be effective communicators and forthright with each other.
“Back then, there’s a word I feared: saying ‘no’. I came to realise that even God responds with three words: yes, no and wait. So, I was told, ‘Warm the food several times, that’s it’s not hot enough, repeat ironing my shirt until it’s crisp enough to swat a fly,’” recalls Dianah. “They limited the number of friends she could interact with, and I ignored the red flags.”
The Wawerus’ is a breathtaking love story, a bond spanning more than 30 years. They say it’s a match made in heaven but which took a longer route to materialise.
“Our family will be an amazing one. We’re having tight work schedules, especially traveling. About this, we agreed that we have to work, obey our bosses and also create family time. Another critical thing is for us to have effective communication and allow God to lead us through,” Sam said.
