By Standard on Saturday team

Concern is growing over the safety of children in large impoverished families following a spate of domestic killings.

More than a dozen children have been attacked or killed this year alone by parents struggling to take care of them in hard economic times.

At a time when the Government is providing the highest levels of social protection ever, questions are now being raised as to whether children in large families that are in crisis should also be categorised as vulnerable like orphans. Calls are also being made for increased access to family planning services.

The Government has a specialised social programme to provide financial support to orphans and vulnerable children that covers those without parents and others being brought up by grandparents and other guardians.

Two incidents last month best illustrate the problem: On May 10, a pregnant woman in Mwingi East District poisoned seven of the eight children in her care because she was “tired of suffering” from alleged violence and neglect.

Ndinda Nyamai, 31, from Nuu location, was admitted to the Mwingi District Hospital with the children she tried to poison following a domestic quarrel with her husband. Fortunately, all seven – three of whom belonged to a runaway co-wife – survived the attack.

Mental health
Two days later, a pregnant mother of three threw her children into a dam near her home in Trans-Mara East District before hanging herself. None was more than five years old. Again, the incident was sparked by money troubles, with the sale of a family cow identified as the incident that triggered the woman’s actions.

Experts say it takes years of repressed anger to turn a petty family issue into a reason for murder. Mass killings of family members, they say, are triggered by stress and frustration from failed expectations.

Women kill their offspring to punish men who they see as failing in their social role as providers. Men, on the other hand, kill to vent their anger at being seen as failures.

“Stress and frustration begin to mount if a man feels he is not living up to social expectations,” says Rev Stephen Menya, a psychologist. “When provoked over the same, such a man reacts irrationally to the point of killing his own family.” In many instances, after committing such an atrocity, the perpetrator takes his life out of shame or for fear of the consequences.

Three of the seven children Nyamai attacked belong to a co-wife who had fled the home in 2008, while four are her own. All were aged between one and eleven years of age. A 16-year-old girl escaped and informed neighbours of the incident. Speaking to the press from her hospital bed, Ndinda accused her husband, Nyamai Musya, who works in Mombasa, of neglect.

“I called him on the phone and told him I was tired of suffering,” she says. “I told him I would kill the children and myself to end the suffering.”

The incident involving the family cow took place in Kipsorwet village, Mogondo location. Anne Mugunda, 28, who was four-months pregnant, drowned her three children, aged 5, 3 and 1, after a dispute with her husband over whether to sell their cow.

Her story echoes that of Pamela Achieng’, 33, who set her home in Homa Bay ablaze last year killing her four children aged between four and 12. Achieng’, who then hanged herself, had been involved in a dispute with her estranged husband over the care of their children.

Such incidents are signs of a problem that has been with Kenyans for years. The violence that erupts in these families in crisis is not always from a frustrated mother. One of the most prominent incidents was the 2002 mass killing of eight people by James Mukobero (aka Jamin Muchika) in Shibuye village, Kakamega.

The dead included Mukobero’s pregnant wife and four of eight children he was struggling to support on a mason’s income. Living in poverty, with eight children to support and a ninth on the way, Mukobero went beserk and killed eight people. He tried to take his own life after the incident by eating rat poison, but survived to face trial.

Deep-seated issues
While his trial sparked debate about his mental health, there was little discussion of the pressure he and his wife must have been under taking care of such a large family with so little money and whether other couples were in the same boat.

Many young couples are facing similar pressures in these hard economic times. With access to family planning limited and few social safety nets to help them, it is the children that suffer the most.

Last week, a Nyeri court sentenced a couple to jail for two years for neglecting their children.  The young couple is said to have locked their three children in the house and left them for three days, between February 22 and 24, without food. Concerned neighbours had to break into the house to rescue the children.

Two weeks ago, a father of three hacked his wife and two of his children to death in Shinyalu, Kakamega East District. Residents say Geoffrey Khamalishi was enraged after the wife criticised him for failing to provide for his family.

His first born, a five-year-old boy, was the only survivor. Khamalishi’s father, Alphonse Mushira, claimed the couple had no marital problems but described his son as a loner who did not share his troubles.

Dr Ben Ayaya, a sociologist, says people who go beserk and kill their families live with deep-seated issues that can be dealt with before they erupt.

“For someone to react to the point of taking another’s life, the provocation is usually repeated over and over to the point that one feels the solution is to permanently stop its source,” he says. He adds that such problems are most common in societies defined by a huge gap between the rich and the poor.

Dr Chris Hart, a psychologist, disagrees. “Even in developed nations, people are violent. What prevents them is the law and fear of an effective police force that will take action,” he says. The reason such cases are on the rise in Kenya, Hart says, is because the police force is inefficient and people believe they can get away with murder.

Another expert points to the cultural set-up in African societies, which approves of or treats leniently corporal punishment against children and women. Dr Kiratu Kiemo, a sociologist and lecturer, contrasts this with the state of affairs in developed countries where a child can sue for assault.

“It is unheard of in Africa, among other conservative societies, for a child to take legal action against their own parents for being ‘corrected’,” he says.

Social pressures
Mass killings of family members are not the only crime directly related to high poverty levels. As Standard On Saturday reporters have found in the Nyanza region, assault, suicide and murder are also common.

Breadwinners unable to provide for their families are taking their lives or attacking close relatives over their inheritance. Recently in Gucha District, a teenage girl had her hand was chopped off by her teenage cousins following a quarrel over food. The 13-year-old was attacked with her siblings as they slept at Bomosambi village, Boochi Chache location.

Her three attackers were angry that the girl’s mother had failed to give them enough food. Faced with having to provide for six children on a limited income, the victim’s mother had apparently favoured her birth children.

In Nyamira County shrinking land has led to an increase in poverty, which in turn has seen a rise in land disputes that have led to murder. Not long ago, a 58-year-old woman was beheaded in Manga District in a dispute over land.

And at Wiobiero village in Homa Bay County, a man struggling to maintain two families committed suicide when his ability to provide was challenged. Jane Onyango, 26, says her husband Charles Mapil killed himself five months marrying a second wife he could barely afford.

The mother of two says Mapil was not able to pay for a rented home for his new wife and believes money problems led him to kill himself weeks later.

Experts agree that the social pressures that lead to all this violence are not being dealt with and families in crisis remain ignored until it erupts. They add that social welfare programmes should be adjusted to help children at risk in struggling families.

— Reporting by Ken-Arthur Wekesa, Grace Wekesa, Phillip Muasya, Kenan Miruka, Naftal Makori, and James Omoro.