{UAH} I should never have married this man
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A happy marriage is almost every woman's dream, but how many married women today would go on and tie the knot with the same man were it possible to rewind the clock?
Esther Muthoni, a 55-year-old mother of nine, says that getting married to her husband of 43 years was the worst mistake she made. Were she to wake up one day and find herself young and single, she would remain that way. This is because, as she puts it, she has never known happiness since she got married to her husband, Cyrus Kanyi, way back in 1971.
The beatings, she says, started almost immediately after their marriage, and within two years, they were sleeping in separate rooms.
Muthoni is so disillusioned with her marriage, she recently reported her husband to the police for beating her up and trying to strangle her. On Thursday last week, Muthoni's husband, a retired teacher, was given a three-year non-custodial sentence for beating her up.
During this period, he is expected to attend marriage counselling classes, keep the peace at home, and ensure his family stays united, failure to which, he will be sent to jail.
But Muthoni is unappeased by this, and has moved back to her parents' home in Mbuyu village, Ndaragwa division, Nyandarua North district, vowing that she has washed her hands off her marriage, and has no intention of ever going back to her matrimonial home.
"Now I can at least sleep for eight hours a night without fearing that he will attack me," she says.
WHAT ROMANCE?
But surely, the two must have been happy at some point, we probe, Kanyi must have impressed her in some way to convince her to become his wife.
"He was my teacher – I was 12 years old when he got me pregnant. That is what led to our marriage," she explains, and adds,
"There was no sweet-talking, the teachers would send us to sweep or clean dishes in their houses and then follow us there. That is what happened to me."
Such teacher-pupil relationships at Mbuyu primary school and in schools in other parts of the country are believed to be what led veteran musician Joseph Kamaru to compose "Ndari ya Mwarimu" (Teacher's darling), a song that talked about affairs between teachers and their pupils, and the favours the girls enjoyed in class. The song caused uproar among teachers, who demanded it banned when it hit the market in the early 1970s.
Muthoni insists that the house sweeping and dish washing did not earn them any favours, at least not in her school, instead, that year, four of them were impregnated by their teachers, she being one of them.
"Four of us got pregnant and got married to the teachers responsible," she says.
Her parents were furious that Kanyi, who was about 25 years then, had forced their teenage daughter to drop out of school in standard six. But Kanyi managed to convince them that he was ready to marry their daughter and take care of her.
In return, the parents were to keep the matter a closely guarded secret, because, explains Muthoni, if the church that owned the primary school got to know about it, he would have been fired.
Muthoni says that that compromise between her parents and her teacher was a monumental mistake, which is to blame for her decades-long suffering, suffering she endured silently until recently when she could no longer stomach it.
"Within two years into the marriage, we were sleeping in separate beds. Several times, I had to ask my father to intervene when things got bad, and each time he promised that he would change, but after a while, he would go back to his violent ways," Muthoni explains.
There is also the fact that Kanyi insisted that she address him as teacher, and not by his name, and would slap Muthoni whenever she disobeyed this directive.
This is not the first time Muthoni has reported her husband to the authorities for assaulting her. The Nyandarua County director of probation, Jackson Abukutse, says that some time ago, Muthoni had filed a case against her husband at the Nyahururu law court, but she withdrew it, after Kanyi convinced her to consider an out of court solution.
SUMMONED BY THE CHIEF
Before the last violent incident that led to the current situation, the two had been summoned to the chief's office, where they were urged to live in peace and harmony. But that evening, Kanyi, incensed that Muthoni had dared report him to the authorities, tried to strangle his wife. She was saved by their youngest child, a 13 year-old, who screamed, attracting neighbours.
When the neighbours arrived at the home, Kanyi slipped away, leaving an unconscious Muthoni on the ground, outside their house. The neighbours took her to the Mairo Inya police post, where the matter was recorded as assault, and a P3 form issued. That is how the matter found its way to court. Muthoni was admitted at the Nyahururu district hospital, where she treated and then released after a couple of hours.
Kanyi appeared in court on January 17th and admitted to the assault charge, but told the magistrate that he was ready to reconcile with his wife. But Muthoni, who was in court, quickly turned down the reconciliation offer and revealed to the court the extent of violence she has endured over the years.
She said that apart from the beatings, she had endured marital rape, and that throughout her marriage, her husband had treated like the clueless pupil she had been before they got married. For this reasons, she explained, she wanted her husband to be punished.
Speaking to us a day after he was sentenced, Kanyi defended himself, saying that he married when he was not ready for it. He confessed that theirs was a stressful marriage, which moved from bad to worse after he retired from teaching. He says that he felt stressed by his family's expectation that he had saved a lot of money to continue catering for all their needs.
He feels that he has been unfairly treated, arguing that he offered his family his best.
"I believe they can attest to that," he says.
But Muthoni has an entirely different opinion, insisting that her husband has always been a "don't-care" father and husband who has never been keen on providing for the family or even educating his children. She says that only two out of their nine children completed secondary school.
But Kanyi does not think a crime has been committed just because his children are not educated.
Irresponsible father?
"It is not a must that a teacher's children be educated. You educate those who are ready to pursue education," he said adding that he has always ensured that his family never goes hungry. The retired teacher is now a subsistence farmer.
But Muthoni feels that he could have done more for his family. Kanyi, she charges, has always been stingy with his money, yet, she alleges, he owns several pieces of land, which he has gone into great pains to hide from her.
While Kanyi does not deny that he has been physically abusive towards his wife over the years, he says that some of the accusations against him are exaggerated.
"I was accused of biting my wife, can this gum bite and injure somebody?" he comments, exposing his toothless month.
He, however, says that he is ready to do anything to save his marriage to Muthoni.
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