Tales of women who go behind their husbands and sire children with other men

During the popular Siri Yangu (my secret) segment of Radio Maisha’s evening drive show, a caller shocked and tickled listeners and the show hosts a week ago when he revealed a top secret he has kept for years.

The caller, a fourth year student at a local university, narrated how he caught his area chief in Mumias and a married woman having an ‘amorous congress’ in a sugarcane plantation.

“The woman was the wife of a bodaboda rider and a mother of three. The duo bought my silence with a Sh200 bob bribe,” he said.

A few years later, he narrated, the chief got involved in an accident and died, but the woman remained his (the caller’s) close friend.

With time the two became much closer, with the woman luring the young man into becoming her secret lover.

“She told me her husband was not only ‘useless’ between the sheets, but also shot blanks and she needed a younger lover to be ‘servicing’ her regularly on the side,” he said.

He went on to add that she insisted he was the best candidate for the job, seeing as he already knew the other damning secret between her and the late chief. Thus, it would be easier for them to hit it off and protect the dirty little secret.

“I hesitated for a while and gave in, only for her to get pregnant later on. She encouraged me not to worry, confessing that even her other two children did not belong to her husband but the late chief,” he revealed.

After further prodding on how she would go about it, the woman revealed to him that she will simply sleep with her husband and dupe him into believing he was responsible for the pregnancy, as she always did with her previous pregnancies.

The story sparked a big debate, with social media users discussing the place of children in an African marriage and why women go to such extents to keep their marriages and families intact.

Friends, relatives and associates always put pressure on couples months after marriage in regard to babies. When children are not forthcoming, it becomes almost everyone’s business to find out why the couple is taking their sweet time.

Could they be infertile? Has someone bewitched them? People start throwing in spanners of all sorts.

It becomes even worse when it’s the woman who has a problem because it will somehow be known, with the man being forced by his kin to marry a second wife.

But when it’s the man who has a problem, many wives, as we discovered, always go behind their husbands and sire children with other men, only to dupe their husbands into believing they are responsible.

Interesting to note, however, is that infertility is not the only reason wives sire children with secret lovers.

Some do so as a way of exacting revenge on husbands when they discover they have secret/parallel families or as punishment to husbands who are serial cheats.

In other instances, such pregnancies are as a result of ‘accidents’. And with abortion out of the question, they are carried to full-term, leading to an increasingly common phenomenon where many men unknowingly raise children they didn’t sire, believing they are theirs.

“To avoid the stigma and dubious suggestions that come with being in such a situation, most wives sire children with secret lovers,” says Lucy, a woman who confesses she would easily do that to save her husband from the pressure and embarrassment.

She goes on to cite the example of Mwende, the woman whose husband chopped off her hands after he discovered she was pregnant with another man’s child.

Mwendd eventually gave birth to a bouncing baby boy. Her husband, on the other hand, is in police remand, pending the ruling in his case.

As for one Cate, who confessed to this writer that she only got married to her husband because he is relatively rich and not because of love, she sired her first child with an ex with whom she was still madly in love.

“I can’t help but curse the day I met him, back in 2002 in college. I ended up marrying him just because of his money and his good soul. Truth is I don’t love him,” says Cate, adding that her husband scores zero when it comes to intimacy.

“The best gift I could give my ex whom I dropped before I got married to my current husband was to sire a child with him,” she adds.

Even though Cate has no plans of leaving her husband, she feels guilty every time she looks at him and ‘their son’. “He is such a loving father to our son, whom he has no clue isn’t his,” she says.

In cases where in-laws start asking tough questions on delayed siring of children, women who suspect their men have fertility problem always try their luck with lovers on the side.

“Men tend to be very reluctant to go for medical checkups, especially when they are ‘firing blanks’. Many will keep trying and even start suspecting or accusing their wives of being barren,” says Joan, a city-based woman.

“So to avoid the drama and agony that comes with such, we always try elsewhere, albeit secretly,” adds Joan, who confesses that she has never sired a child outside her marriage, but it’s an option she would easily give a try if her husband was infertile.

She further wonders: “Who wants her marriage to be the centre of attention in the family, with his people pointing an accusing finger to you yet you can save face, especially if it’s your husband who has the weakness? Never mind sperm donation is a concept that’s frowned upon by most men around her.”

Many women argue that this is an easier way of ‘taking one for the team’, especially in a society that blames wives, even when it is the husband who is infertile.

The biggest victims of such scams are the rich, or so it seems. Owing to their busy schedules, most big time business men, politicians and the likes, are always away from their wives.

This always leaves their wives at the mercy of former romantic but broke lovers, whom they fool with behind their husbands’ backs.

In one high profile case, the last born son of a popular, peace-loving politician from Western Kenya looks like he is of mixed race. It is believed the wife to the politician sired the child with a chemist of Asian extraction.

But at least for the politician, he knows his wife cheated on him. Many other Kenyan men are raising stranger’s children, thinking they are their biological sons and daughters.

Some wives are so smart. To cover their tracks, they go for lovers with almost similar physical traits as their husbands.

But others don’t care so much. They have crazy reasons for secretly siring children with men besides their husbands.

Tales have been told of women, especially those who deem their husbands ‘ugly’ but rich, who secretly make babies with lovers on the side for the sake of getting cute babies.

Others go for smart men to save one of two of their children from their husband’s stupid genes and other defects.

Joice, a yet to get married college student, tells this writer that if she unfortunately lands a rich but ugly man, she would still go ahead and marry him. But, she says, she has to do some genetic engineering to have handsome and beautiful babies. Some of the men we talked to expressed fears that indeed some of the children they raise may not be theirs biologically. But they wouldn’t want to dig deeper for details to authenticate biological links between them and their children.

“It is a Pandora’s box many would never dare open. What is a man to do if he discovers ten or so years down the line the kids who call him dad are not his,” wonders Japheth, arguing that much as some of his kids have characters, traits, personalities or even looks different from all other family members, going for DNA tests would be the last thing any right thinking man would do.

For Felix, such a move is dangerous. “It’s inviting unnecessary stress to yourself, especially at such a time when we already have enough from the harsh economy,” he says.

“You can imagine the awkwardness of bringing up the topic of going for DNA test? What if you discover the children are actually yours? What happens to the trust that existed between the two of you? Can that be repaired?” wonders Felix.