‘My husband was a criminal, I’m not’: Young widows of Mathare on fight against poverty and rejection
Mathare widows Mwanga*, Tumaini* and Amini*. They became lost their husbands in their 20s.
What you need to know:
- Married as teenagers and widowed young, these women now battle with stigma, poverty and single parenthood.
- Community rejection and economic hardship continue haunting them after their husbands died through crime and violence.
Down a slip of tarmac road, one of the meanders in Mathare, Nairobi, stands a mix of concrete and rusty mabati houses flanking the neatly tidied stretch. Locals say it is the handiwork of young men and women from Climate Worx Mtaani.
The place is still. No loud music, raised voices, or passers-by brushing past as in a crowded street. Doors are locked, and clothes hang from lines stretched across doorways. A whiff of dry, mouldy air lingers, though some concrete houses feel welcoming, brightened by colourful flowers lining their stairways.
It looks like a settlement tucked below a valley. Rickety houses cling to the wall of the brown, fresh soil, their rusty roofs almost smothered by a thick carpet of grass. Now and then, women and girls pass by with jerrycans bound for the kiosks, as men pull carts or rush up and down the road.
But for the girls forced into marriage as teenagers while still in school – pushed into violent unions because circumstances left them no choice – the promise of a bottom-up economic transformation to Singapore means little. They became widows before they could even tell the difference between a marriage and a husband. Their hurry is not to the kiosks or the road, but to coil into their hearts, into their houses.
Mwanga's* life
In 2019, while in Form Two at a day school in Mathare, she was only 17. That was when she met a young man, then 20, who promised her heaven and earth. Months later, he impregnated her. Two months on, she confirmed the pregnancy. Her mother, who had scraped together school fees from selling secondhand clothes, was devastated.
She drove her out to live with the man but warned her sternly: she must return to school, whether heavily pregnant or newly delivered. Schooling had to end. What the mother did not see was that she had forced her child into marriage before adulthood and handed her into a perilous union.
Mwanga* was in Form Two at a day school in Mathare when she met a young man from a criminal gang who later became her husband. He was eventually killed by the police.
She never cared to know who the ‘son-in-law’ was. Her anger was so consuming that she could not bear her daughter’s face. “I didn’t know what he did,” she says, folding her arms across a wooden table in a secure room where we spoke, away from the eyes of passing residents. “Sometimes he would vanish for four months, sometimes six. I wondered what was happening. When he returned, and I asked where he had been, he would beat me with a knife.”
She has scars across her arms and face due to the assault. She later learned from neighbours, while visiting her mother’s house for food, since he left none behind during his disappearances, what he was actually doing for a living.
“People on the road looked at me strangely. Then one man pulled me aside and asked, ‘Do you know where your husband is? He is at Kenyatta National Hospital. His stomach was cut open, intestines spilling, after an angry mob attacked him for hijacking and robbing a bus early in the morning,’” she recalls the man telling her.
She felt as if a bomb had exploded at her feet. That is when she knew that the man she called a husband was a gangster, and the months he disappeared were actually going into exile since the police were hunting for him.
She says even the house they lived in was rent-free because he had “grabbed” it from the owner. On the day she gave birth to their child in July 2020, he was in hiding. He reappeared three months later, promising to change.
Violence
“From then on, he did not disappear, but he was violent,” she says, tears welling before spilling down her cheeks.
She pulls at her faded grey T-shirt, trying to release the pain in her sobs. For five minutes the air feels numbing hot, her hiccups carrying the burning grief of a young woman who is only 24 today. “He had started selling drugs. He told me if the police caught him, he would claim he had changed and left gangster life behind,” she says. “He used to walk around with a bag. Inside were cocaine, heroin, and other drugs.”
Meanwhile, they agreed he would care for the child while she returned to school. On his selling rounds, he left the baby with women selling vegetables by the roadside. When the child turned one, Mwanga’s world collapsed. Returning from school, everyone she passed whispered condolences. She did not understand until a friend of her husband told her he had been shot dead by police in a lunchtime raid at an eatery.
Mwanga says that day remains one of the worst memories she cannot bear to revisit. He was buried the same day, having converted to Islam. What followed, she says, made her life unbearable. Her mother cared for the child while she finished high school and earned a C plain, but life became an extended torment.
It is now five years since he was killed, yet Mwanga says the community has refused to accept her or let her live in peace. “I’ll be going to buy groceries or fetch water and you hear women or men shouting, ‘See that woman, she is the wife of the man who was killed for robbing people,’” she says, choking on tears. “If I greet a girl around here, someone will warn her, ‘Avoid her, she is 'poison'. She is dangerous. She will spoil you.’ They don’t care how I feel.”
Rejection from women's groups
Mwanga says she has tried to join women’s groups to pool money for her child’s education and wellbeing, but every group rejected her. “They say, ‘What if we loan her and she disappears like her husband? What if she robs us like her husband?’” she says, tears rolling down her cheeks.
She survives by cleaning houses in nearby suburbs, her routine a single motion: from work straight home to her child, whom she escorts to school and collects after class. She has no friends, not even her mother, since their relationship strained further when her mother learnt the kind of man her daughter had been tied to.
“I cry most of the time in the house or somewhere away from my child. I don’t want my child to know I’m in pain. Whenever the child asks about the father, I say he went on a trip. If my child is not in school, I am always with them. I cannot and will not trust anyone with my child, given the hostility in the community,” she says. “Even in the house, sometimes I fear people will break in and punish us for my husband’s crimes.”
She hopes that someday a miracle will give her enough money to leave Mathare far behind.
Just 22 and already a widow
If hopes were to fly, they might land in the footsteps of Tumaini*. She is just 22, and already a widow. At 16, while in Form Two in 2020, she was impregnated by a man in his early 20s. Her mother, who had raised her alone through menial washing jobs, was furious. She drove her out, and Tumaini went to live with the man. Life began as husband and wife.
“It was an open secret who he was. Friends told me I had married the greatest thief of all time, but I had no choice. My mother didn’t want me. She said I had shamed her and wasted all her money and time. She was mad at me,” she says, tracing lines on the table with her finger.
At 16, Tumaini* was in Form Two in 2020 when she was impregnated by a man in his early 20s. Her mother, who had raised her alone through menial washing jobs, was furious. She chased her away to live with the man, who was a gangster.
The union was cruel. Two or three days a week, he beat her, as if it were a routine dose. She could not ask for money unless he decided when and how much. She could not leave the house without his permission. Then she learnt he was on the police red list, which she calls a roster of thugs marked for elimination. They moved to another informal settlement, but the beatings continued through her pregnancy and after she delivered later in 2020.
Early in 2021, she pleaded with him to let her visit her mother. He escorted her, but Tumaini begged to spend the weekend there for rest and relief. That was the last time she saw him. “On Monday morning, as I walked, everyone I met shook their heads. One man offered to buy me food. I asked him, ‘Since when did you care if I’m hungry?’” she says.
Burnt to death
She would soon need that strength. A woman told her that her husband had been burnt to death in Kileleshwa after a robbery. What saved her, she says, were her friends. “They were there for me,” she says, breaking into tears. “They fundraised; they looked out for me. To this day, they stand by me. I think it is because I am social. I like talking to people. I am friendly.”
She says she has never met anyone who reminds her of her husband, but the thought of losing him still wounds her. “You know; I was raised without a father. I never had a father. So when the father of my child accepted me, I was happy my child would grow up with one. Now he is gone. That hurts in a way I cannot imagine; like being cut into pieces with a razor blade,” she says.
Life feels like terror
In the case of Amini*, who had no choice but to live with the man who impregnated her in 2017 when she was just 15 and in Form One, life feels like terror. That same year, her mother died in their rural home in Kakamega. Her stepfather began mistreating her, she says. She sought solace in a young man in his early 20s. When she became pregnant, the stepfather chased her away, and the man who became her husband welcomed her into his arms.
Amini* had no choice but to live with the man who impregnated her in 2017 when she was just 15 and in Form One. That same year, her mother died in their rural home in Kakamega.
But he, too, was violent. A boda boda operator, he later moved them to Nairobi in search of greener pastures. Then in 2023, he was struck by a lorry on Thika Superhighway and died instantly, leaving Amini a widow at just 21. “As we speak, my son has been chased out of school because I owe Sh1,800 in fees,” she says in a low voice.
No one to turn to
“I have no one to turn to. If my mother were alive, I wouldn’t be facing this horror, or at least the burden wouldn’t be this heavy. I cry every day. I’m tired of life. I even hate my child. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be suffering like this.”
She says she has no friends in the community, only herself. “Here everyone is drowning in their own struggles. If you share yours, they’ll sneer, ‘Who sent you to marry and become a widow?’ So I’d rather carry my pain alone,” she says.
Ease the burden
However, there are ways that these young widows can ease the burden they carry. For many, the first step is simply having someone willing to listen. Evelyne Ados, project coordinator at the Coalition for Grassroots Human Rights Defenders-Kenya, says many of the young widows they support are struggling with overwhelming stress, grief, isolation and the responsibilities of raising children alone at a very young age.
While the organisation does not have in-house counsellors, it regularly partners with other organisations to provide psychosocial support. “Most of the time, stress is eating them up,” says Evelyne. “They are young mothers and young widows. Some are carrying challenges that they cannot even talk about. Sometimes the husband died, or was killed, and the family comes demanding everything that belonged to him. Some are left with children to raise on their own and have nobody to turn to.”
Honest work
The organisation supports more than 500 women across Nairobi and Machakos counties, including young and older widows. Beyond counselling, the focus is on helping them find ways to earn a living and become financially independent.
One of the biggest challenges, Evelyne says, is income. “We tell them that there is dignity in any honest work,” she says. “As long as the income can help you take care of your child, there is no shame in it.”
To help them rebuild their lives, the organisation has previously provided business grants to women who demonstrate commitment to a business idea or who have already started small enterprises but need support to grow them. “We look for people who are passionate and willing to put effort into their businesses because we want them to succeed,” she says.
But economic hardship is only one part of the struggle. Many of the young widows whose husbands were gang members or suspected criminals continue to face stigma long after the men have died, she says. “Some are blamed for the actions of their husbands. Others are treated as though they carry the same criminal identity,” she says.
She notes that some even face pressure from members of criminal gangs who believe they have a right to inherit the widow of a deceased colleague. “When there are threats, we encourage the women to report the matter to the authorities and seek protection,” she says.
Emotional burden
She says the emotional burden is often heavy for widows whose husbands were killed by mobs. The videos and images of their killings are constantly shared on social media, forcing them and their children to repeatedly relive traumatic events, she says.
For now, the organisation also sensitises communities to stop associating widows and their children with the actions of deceased husbands. But changing attitudes remains difficult. “There are people who still believe that because the husband was a bad person, the family should also be rejected,” she says. “We try to remind communities that these women and children are still part of us. They are still our children and they deserve to be accepted.”
Accept me or live with it
For Mwanga, Tumaini, and Amini, acceptance remains a distant hope. Yet organisations such as Evelyne’s are trying to ensure widowhood does not become a life sentence of poverty, isolation and fear.
Like Tumaini says, “I have accepted that I'm a widow, and I know my husband was a criminal. Society will have to live with that. It is their problem if they keep labelling me in whatever way they choose. What do they want to do? Nothing. There is nothing I can do about it.”
*Names changed to protect their privacy.
